


the dead of night

by josiebelladonna



Series: now it's dark [9]
Category: Anthrax (US Band), Bandom, Rush (Band)
Genre: Adventure & Romance, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Cyberpunk, Dark Fantasy, Dark Past, F/M, Fan Comics, Fanart, Ghosts, Healing, Healthy Relationships, Illustrations, Magic and Science, POV Alternating, Past Violence, Psychological Trauma, Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:14:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 24,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28421541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josiebelladonna/pseuds/josiebelladonna
Summary: When Scott and Charlie met Kristina, she resembled to that of a ghost, and yet she had enchanted them with the grace of her heart and soul. Her death left a hole in their hearts. So when the girlfriend of one of their own goes missing in the dead of night, the lore of Kristina resurfaces with a vengeance, and in the most unlikely of places, and in the most unlikely of times.***on hiatus until further notice
Relationships: Frank Bello/Original Female Character, Geddy Lee/Original Female Character, Joey Belladonna/Original Female Character, Scott Ian/Original Female Character
Series: now it's dark [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1519889
Kudos: 1





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> *will have illustrations included!
> 
> this is something that's been rolling around in the back of my head for the better part of two months, ever since I wrote six feet under. even though I aborted the fourth book of up all night and rendered that series into a trilogy, I wanted to do something with Joey and Hannah, but I wanted to bring them into my love of sci-fi. There was also a rather serious part of their canon that I wasn't ready to show yet, either.  
> I also just think of the trauma the greater collective has sustained from this utter nightmare of a year, and I want to demonstrate that healing the wounds of the past, while difficult, is incredibly cathartic.
> 
> takes place in both the now it's dark verse (i.e., Nancy, Dominique, and the Bennett sisters are returning - Lars will be mentioned but he won't make an appearance) as well as Joey + Hannah's world; six feet under and buried alive should give some insight to Kristina and Scott and Charlie's importance, too. I moved it all under the moniker of now it's dark just so, you know, it's a little more organized.  
> I'm on a Rush kick right now (and given they're a major influence on Joey in particular) so they'll be playing an important role, too. I've also noticed their tag is mostly slash; ain't nothing wrong with that in the least, but here's something a little different.  
> Quoth the mighty Neil Peart, "I never intended to become famous. I just wanted to get good."
> 
> original characters:  
> Hannah Ellsberg: Joey's childhood best friend turned lover; artist and friend to Nancy and Dominique  
> Francine "Frankie" Moody: Hannah's best friend and Frank's love interest; went missing following the events of now it's dark  
> Kristina Mayfield: Scott's childhood best friend; a female folk musician from Queens who also had a short relationship with Charlie. committed suicide in late 1997.  
> Nancy Kensington: art student from Seattle relocated to upstate New York; Geddy's love interest  
> Dominique Waters: journalist in New York City leading the case to find Francine  
> Angeline Belotti: Dominique's boss at the New York Times  
> Marcia Bennett: baker from Seattle relocated to Syracuse  
> Sonia Bennett: actress; Marcia's younger sister
> 
> real peeps:  
> Scott Ian: guitarist and founder of anthrax  
> Frank Bello: bassist of anthrax  
> Joey Belladonna: lead singer of anthrax  
> Charlie Benante: drummer of anthrax  
> Geddy Lee: bassist and frontman of rush  
> Alex Lifeson: guitarist of rush  
> Neil Peart: drummer of rush  
> (Lars Ulrich and Danny Spitz are mentioned)

“Not sure if that was a bad dream or not,” I muttered to myself, “—I hope it was a dream.”

I rolled over in bed next to Pearl, who was still fast asleep. I thought for sure I had been done with Kristina, and I thought for sure the ghost of her hadn't haunted Charlie himself given she almost had him killed almost twenty years ago. She had vanished into thin air following that horrible night, the night in which I thought Frankie and his girlfriend at the time were both going to suffer a coronary from the reaction of it all.

I'll think about her sometimes, like she'll be a fleeting thought in my mind, especially in a time whereby anything concrete had fallen away and disintegrated into nothing. The virus had ravaged the world and shook it all down to its very foundations, and all of us in the music industry wondered what would happen from that point on out, even with the vaccine on hand.

Nothing seemed to change with it all at our helm and our finger tips, including our future. Pearl and I tried to stay optimistic for the sake of Rev, but without the sight of a stage in concrete vision before us, it was hard to keep true to the smiles on our faces.

This wasn't the first time during quarantine I dreamed about Kristina, my saving her life and telling her to stay alive for the world's sake. I would imagine her over me with the noose around her neck and I talked her down, but before she even so much as came down, I woke up. And there I was having usurped the role of the person who must stay alive for the world's sake, for the sake of my son and my band.

That time around, however, I had witnessed myself going back in time to save her for real. It was so real, and so lucid, that I convinced myself that I had done that. That I had ventured back in time to save Kristina. But I rolled my head over the pillow to see Pearl still asleep. I hadn't moved a muscle there in our bed, and I could tell Rev was up early at that point.

Careful not to wake her, I slithered out of bed and made my way down the hall to check on him. I peered into his bedroom to see he wasn't in there. I noticed the dream catcher Pearl had given him earlier that year, and I thought of Joey. There was something about dream catchers that always got to me: they captured the bad dreams only to be swept away by the morning winds, and yet there was something more about them. Something within the bad dreams, and mine in particular, that could hold the key to solving everything.

I continued to the kitchen to find him at the table eating breakfast already. Rev was growing up, even in the face of the pandemic and stuck in quarantine.

I told him good morning and I decided to check in with Frankie and Charlie at the computer.

The latter was probably busy with a quarantine jam or something because the line was busy, but Frankie picked right up, still wrapped up in his bathrobe and with those big black framed glasses on his face.

I told him about the dream about Kristina, and I told him about it in a low voice: even though I had confessed about her on my spoken word tour several years ago in Boston, Pearl still didn't know about her, and neither did Rev. I never did find the courage to speak of her to them.

“Wow,” Frankie replied in a hushed voice.

“Yeah. It was so real, too. I woke up muttering to myself and everything.”

“Huh. Do you think maybe it's a sign?”

“A sign of what?”

“A sign that you're in love with her?”

I peered over my shoulder to make sure Pearl wasn't coming for me.

“You still haven't told her about Kristina?” Frankie chuckled at that.

“Nah. I just haven't been able to, as much as we talk about shit, too. But do you—do you really think that?”

He swallowed and sighed through his nose.

“You're thinking about—” I started, to which he nodded.

“It reminds me of the time Francine went missing—” Frankie stopped for a second, and he brought a hand to his mouth. Even though he had everything he could ask for, when Francine disappeared shortly after Charlie's near death experience, it absolutely shattered him. Even after Francine had gone missing, Frankie regretted breaking it off with her, just how I swore to Joey that he could have stayed with us throughout the Nineties. She went missing right after his last girlfriend had died, which happened after his brother was murdered. Neither case was solved, and yet it gave me a window into Frankie's strength, to put on such a brave face in the wake of such horrible things.

“They never did find her, did they?” To which he shook his head.

“Kinda makes you wanna—go back in time, doesn't it.”

“Hell yeah, it does. Go back and save Kristina and find Francine.”

“There's letting go and there's something that makes you realize you can't let go,” I said.

“How the hell are we gonna do that, though?” asked Frankie; and I took a second look to find the tears within his eyes. I thought about the dream catcher in Rev's room. Maybe my intentions were right and they served more than their intended lore.

“Do you have a dream catcher on hand, Frankie?” I asked him.

“A dream catcher?”

“Yeah. You know, the thing from Native American lore that captures your nightmares and they blow away come the morning?”

“I think so. I remember Joey gave me one years and years ago, back around the Greater of Two Evils, but I'll have to look for it. I think Charlie might have one, too, I'm not sure. Why?”

“I have an idea. Lay underneath the dream catcher and go to sleep. When you wake up, try and think about what you dreamed. If it's about Francine, talk about it aloud to yourself if you have to. I'll do the same thing but with Kristina—” I almost breathed out her name. “—and maybe we can help each other out, you know?”

“Yeah. We're alive in this nightmarish time that they didn't see so it only makes sense that—we heal ourselves on some degree—”

He then turned his head and fell into silence.

“Okay,” he called out to the room. He returned to me. “I'll do that in a few minutes,” he vowed.

“A few minutes?” I echoed.

“Yeah. I'm being called back to bed.”

“Okay. I'll see you in a bit, Frankie.”

We switched off at the same time, and I stood to my feet and doubled back out of the room. Pearl and Rev were in the kitchen, which gave me a chance to head into his bedroom. I spotted the dream catcher, but there was no way I could take it for myself. Instead, I took a seat between his bed and the side of his little desk so my head was right underneath the dream catcher. I looked up at the clock on the desk. Those little hands still glowed bright even as the morning light shone through the window next to me.

I hadn't had my cup of coffee yet and thus I closed my eyes at the drop of the hat. I focused on the dream catcher over my head and I drifted off to sleep right there in Rev's room.

It felt like I wasn't asleep for very long when I woke up in an alleyway somewhere. I blinked several times to ensure I wasn't dreaming, but I fondled the ground underneath me. Grains of sand on top of smooth cobble stones. Very much real. I recognized him laying there on the ground before me.

“Frankie?” I whispered to him. He had that long lush dark hair once again, complete with the bangs, something I was not expecting in the least. Indeed, I felt something brush against the sides of my face and neck. I reached up to feel my hair. I had my long hair again.

I glanced up at the alleyway to see a short curvy woman standing on the corner up ahead. She looked familiar even from a distance. At one point, she turned around to look at me with a concerned expression upon her face. I recognized her brown eyes and her long dark hair.

“H-Hannah?” I sputtered out. Hannah Ellsberg, a girl I had recalled from around the time _Spreading the Disease_ released: she and Joey went back to their childhoods.

“Joey!” she shouted across the street. Frankie lifted his head and let out a groan.

“God—what the hell happened?” he asked me as he lifted himself up in a push up position. I looked up to find Joey, with his long lush jet black curls over his shoulders. Even in the dim light, I could make out the sight of his full baby face. I turned back to Frankie and the perplexed look on his face.

“I think we've gone back in time.”


	2. ghosts

I had no idea if I could stand up right, but then again I watched Frankie lift himself up on the ground as if he was doing his own push ups. He brushed himself off and turned to me with a hand extended out. I held onto his hand; he used his other hand to set onto my shoulder to help me up.

When he and I were face to face, he gazed on at me with a frightened look upon his face.

“What year do you think it is?” he asked me in a low voice; I glanced over at Hannah and Joey nearing us. I returned to him and shook my head.

“What are you guys doing here?” she asked us.

“We were—looking—for something,” Frankie sputtered and I could

“We were looking for something, too,” Hannah replied as she put her arm around Joey's lower back: I spotted her hand on his hip. The solemn look on her face told it all. Francine had just gone missing.

“D'you guys call the police?” I asked Joey.

“Francine's parents did, but neither of us felt like it was going to help matters,” he confessed with a shrug of his shoulders.

“Yeah, especially since she went missing in Canada,” Hannah added, to which her face fell. I never realized how much she resembled to that of a doll with her full round face and milky skin and her deep dark eyes. Kristina had long blonde almost silvery white hair which reminded me of Hannah's near black locks, but if I recalled it well, Hannah was part Native American like Joey himself; except she was also part Scandinavian rather than half Italian like him.

All I knew from their story was that they met when they were kids and they separated some time in middle school, because she moved over to Rochester and he became Mr. Hockey Player. They found each other again when he entered the fold at Anthrax and we had put out _Armed and Dangerous_ with him, and then I had no idea what happened after that. They separated again after _Spreading the Disease_ and then we let Joey go before _State of Euphoria_ , and there they were again. I had my hair back again, though.

“Yeah, Scott, I remember you sayin' we had to put production on hold just to find Francine,” Joey pointed out with a slight smirk on his face. Didn't really help matters, but I knew Frankie and I had to go along with it. But then again, Joey was still babyfaced like when he first joined, so all I could assume was we had gone back to just prior to our showing him the door.

“Uh, yeah,” was all I could say. He chuckled at me and all I could feel was my face growing warm.

“Yeah, I remember you actually calling up me and Joey and saying 'production is being put on hold because it's an emergency we're dealing with here',” Hannah recalled, complete with a telephone gesture up to her ear. So they were living together. “You don't remember doing that? You also told us to meet you here at this very corner.”

“Yeah, it was like just this morning,” Joey added.

“Of course I remember it!” I exclaimed. “It's just—I didn't think you guys'd get here as quickly as you did.”

“Hey, if it's Francine or my mom or anybody we care about, we're gonna get here stat, Scott,” Joey assured me.

“Stat Scott,” she echoed. “Gonna stat some Scott.”

“Bit of a tongue twister, too,” Frankie pointed out, which made the two of them laugh.

“Well, come along—I see Nancy and her new boy up ahead,” Hannah gestured up the block. Frankie shivered and followed her along; I ran my fingers through that stringy hair around the crown of my head and followed suit. Frankie and I emerged from the alleyway to the sidewalk and the street, where we were met with those tall buildings making up the skyline of New York City. I wondered who Nancy was as I stared up at the apartment buildings on the block. Something metallic drifted up above the rooftop of the building closest to us. I didn't what it was but something about it made me squirm in the soles of my shoes. I peered down to the street before us.

A pillar of smoke floated up from a manhole cover and vaporized into nothing. Next to the pillar was a small neon blue light on a post. Something moved in the light and the smoke.

A ghost. A faint ghost about the color of the blue neon emerged from the fog. Three more appeared from the vent on the storm drain before they vaporized into nothing.

Nightmares. Nightmares were all I could think about.

I could hear them talking to one another next to Frankie and me.

“It's okay—we're gonna find her,” I heard him whisper to her. I turned my head to find Hannah putting her arms around Joey's svelte waist, and his resting his hand on the back of her head. I wondered about the warmth between the two of them, and it made me miss Kristina even more.

I glanced up at ahead to another dark haired woman standing on the corner with—

“Is that Geddy Lee,” Frankie blurted out.

Joey and Hannah glanced over at us with beaming grins on their faces. I couldn't resist the grin on my face at the sight of that hooked nose and those feathery bangs over deep set eyes. He looked nothing like from this era, however: he had shed his long hair by this era, or so I thought. I wondered about him, especially when they entered our view and I noticed his skin was smooth, much like Joey's face.

“Hey, you two,” Joey squeaked out; his voice quivered and waved with excitement.

“There they are,” I heard Nancy say. She showed off a big red wine colored smile at us and gestured towards the four of us.

“Ah, the infamous New Yorkers,” Geddy's Canadian accent cut through me like a knife. I couldn't believe it when he neared us.

“Scott, Frank—this is my friend Nancy Kensington,” Hannah introduced us. “Art student from Seattle.”

“And I've met ya already,” Joey replied with a wink of his eye.

“I know you have,” Nancy taunted him with a grin on her face.

“By the way, what even happened with you and Chris?” Hannah asked her.

“We broke up—it went downhill pretty quickly, like... over the course of a few months. Dominique and Matt broke up, too.”

“Oh, damn,” Frankie remarked.

“Yeah,” Nancy raised her dark eyebrows in answer. “He and I broke up but I found him, though.” She glanced over to Geddy and those large specs over his narrow face, to which he nodded his head from side to side.

“That girl also disappeared in Toronto, too,” he pointed out. “We came together out of intensity.”

“Francine?” Frankie corrected him.

“That's right! She went missing in the dead of night in Toronto.”

“He's more of a cop than a cop,” Joey cracked, which brought a laugh out of all of us.

“Well, let's get out of the street, shall we?” Nancy suggested as she adjusted the shoulder strap of her bag. “You guys look cold and I feel like there's something watching us.” She peered up at the apartment buildings again, and I followed her gaze to the metallic object up above the rooftop.

“What even is that?” I asked her. “Do you know?”

“It's a drone,” said Hannah. “I'm glad it's way the hell up there, too. Joey said he feels weird when one comes closer to him.”

“Yeah, Lars and I were over in Boston a while back and we saw one of those,” Joey recalled.

“I've seen a few up in Canada, too,” Geddy added as he put his arm around Nancy's shoulder. “You get like this shaky, frightful feeling within you—like you're about to be attacked by something vicious.” He pointed across the street to a small bright lit cafe.

“Let's go there—looks warm and toasty in there.”

“We can have a cup of Joey and a glass of wine,” Hannah declared.

“Exactly!” he laughed. Joey and the girls stepped towards the curb, and Frankie stood next to Joey with his arms folded across his chest, even though he wore a light sweater. Geddy, meanwhile, turned to me. I could see those eyes of his digging deep within me behind the gradient shades. He gestured for me to come closer to him.

“What era are you from?” he asked me in a low enough voice for me to hear over the slight noise of the street.

“The pandemic era,” I said. “Frankie and me both—we came back to find Francine and for me to meet up with—someone dear to me.”

“A young lady?”

“Yeah. A girl I went to school with and—kinda had a thing with. It was totally a secret so no one from that era knows I'm here.”

“Well—Alex and I came back to redo things for _Presto_ and _Hold Your Fire_ , but apparently year numbers are things you can miss upon time travel, especially when you have a wild mind such as mine. We wanted to hit it through again, so we tried again.”

“And now—you're here.”

“We're here. Well, I am, anyways. Alex is back home with his girlfriend and his baby.”

I raised his eyebrows at him.

“And yes. Neil is with us, too.”

I opened my mouth to say something, but no sound came out. He gestured for me to come in closer to him. He peered over at Joey, Frankie, Hannah, and Nancy at the curb.

“I know how transient everything can be,” he whispered to me. “I know how things can end, and so quickly.”

Something caught my eye.

I recognized her long platinum blonde hair down to her waist. Like one of the ghosts roaming about the street, except her dress and her cloak whipped behind her in the winds rather than become part of the scenery. I knew that guitar case on her back anywhere. Geddy followed my gaze.

“Is that her?” I nodded my head.

“Kristina!” I exclaimed and my voice echoed over the pavement before us. She turned her head to show me her deep set dark eyes, a sharp contrast to that long blonde hair. Her eyes fixated onto me. I thought I would never see those eyes again following the release of _Volume 8_.

The corners of her mouth curled up into a warm Mona Lisa type smile.

“Kristina!” I repeated, to which she hurried towards me. She gripped onto the strap of her guitar case and hurried over to me: strands of her long blonde hair streamed behind her head. Her black lace skirt billowed behind her legs like a sail. A firm feeling emerged inside of my throat. Over twenty years without her, and yet it was about to hold off for the time being for me.

“Hey, Scott,” she greeted me in that kind voice once she came within earshot.


	3. strings

“So tell me more about the break ups.” It was a strange thing from me to ask of that, but I had my hope that it would bring some insight to this time period and also to the case of Francine.

The bunch of us were congregated around the largest table right in the center of the cafe. I took a seat next to Kristina and the two of us were seated across from Hannah and Joey; Frankie, Nancy, and Geddy had pulled up three chairs to the edge of the table. I leaned in closer to Kristina and that fresh smell wafting off of her neck. Her deep eyes gazed back at me like big black holes. Those old feelings about her from our school days returned to me: I had my first kiss with her, and with anybody, right at the start of Rosh Hashanah. There was a part of me that wanted to hold her hand, but I had my doubts, though.

Even though I was back to my twenty something self, I still believed I was married to Pearl. But then again, for all I knew, I was still bound in my marriage to Marge. I looked down to my left hand to see a faint tan line on my finger. I had no idea what year it was, and part of me wanted to let loose and have a little fun with Kristina. We had come out of high school and I had found myself in the hot seat next to her. I squirmed on top of the plush vinyl cushion, especially when I eyed the faded stonewash denim making up her skirt.

“Chris and I were fighting a lot,” Nancy explained. “I wanted to show him that there was more to our relationship than just love making and making art. We met Hannah when she and Joey got back together, and I wanted us to be like them. Something about Chris and Joey looking similar to one another or some shit... but it was starting to feel like a cheap romance between us. A cheap romance that became a knock off of the real thing. So we got together one day and we sat down on the couch and broke up for literally four hours.”

“It still baffles me that it took you that long to break it off with him,” Geddy pointed out as he took a sip from his water glass.

“Well, we had to talk through living situations and everything,” she explained. “I had to figure out where I wanted to go, and so I called up Hannah and she recommended me to Marcia and Sonia in Rochester. It was clear across the country from Seattle but I was willing to do it, though. Just pick up and leave, especially with Seattle going the way in which it's going at the moment. I never would've met you, either.”

I lowered my gaze to the sight of her hand resting upon the top of the table. Her fingers crept closer to him, to which he rested his arms upon the table. I looked over at Joey and Hannah, the latter of whom had snuggled closer to him even though it wasn't too cold in there. Frankie just sat there with the glass in one hand and his gaze pointed down to the table.

“As for Matt and Dominique—I'm still not sure what went wrong there,” Nancy continued. “Dom just called me up one day almost out of the blue and said 'Matt and I are done' and I was like, 'really?' You know, the whole thing about me and Chris, like 'I thought things were going great between you.' And she said, 'nah, it went out the window pretty quickly.' At that point, I had found my own place right next door to Marcia and Sonia, and so I told her that she could rent out with me. She and I are living together in Rochester and working at Marcia and Sonia's upholstery shop.”

“What's it called again?” Geddy asked her.

“Sew Into You.”

“Sew Into You, that's it! You told me and Alex about it and we thought it was the best thing ever. And then there was that bakery you and I really like—Smell the Magic.”

“Yeah, she tried to get me a job there but the schedule was crazy, though.” She turned her head towards Hannah. “Wasn't it?”

“Yeah, it was like—check in a three in the morning and then clock out at noon,” Hannah filled in. “I couldn't take it, either, because it was messing with my sleep schedule and my artistry—but then Joey re-entered the picture and the gallery was taking off, too. I had no choice but to leave.”

“You always smelled like donuts whenever I saw you, though,” Joey pointed out.

“Yeah, and I gave you and Francine free donuts for a little bit, too! I want my boy to stay thin and spry, though.” She reached down to pat his belly and he flinched back a bit.

“Thin and spry so we can go hikin' out in the Sierra Nevadas when there's no snow out there,” he cracked.

“Eh, I'm a California girl, baby,” Hannah said with a shrug of her shoulders, “we hike up a mountain as much as we hitch up on the beach and hitchhike to the desert. I once told that to Francine and she was like 'surprised you're not a song writer.'”

“Did she know you were joking, though?” Geddy asked her.

“Oh, yeah. She and I often joke with stuff like that, too. Joke and mess around and whatnot.”

“Art whore, emphasis on 'whore',” Joey teased her, which made her slap him on the shoulder and hush him.

“Did you see Francine before she went missing, though?” I asked Hannah, to which her expression turned serious.

“I did, yeah. We were in fact up in Toronto when it happened, too. We were staying up there for an art show and we were on a tight budget of sorts because of the exchange rate. Frankie told me she was going out for a money order, coffee, and a block of cheese. She didn't come back for about an hour so I figured she just got lost in the city. I went to bed and then I woke up and saw she still hadn't come back yet. I called Joey and he asked me everything, like 'when did she leave' and 'did you call the cops' and all that. He also told me to wait a little while longer to make sure she'd come back. I went to the show and she still didn't show up. I called him again and he told me to call the cops, so I did—I called the Mounties and told them about her—Francine Moody, from Rochester, New York, twenty seven years old, blonde hair blue eyes and thin and petite as a rail, born the thirtieth of April, last seen nine thirty at night. And then I called Nancy because I knew about her relationship with Geddy, a Canadian man. I just felt like that was something he should've known, too. And then... it was just the weirdest thing.”

“I was actually the last guy to have seen her,” Geddy added. “This blonde young lady with an upstate accent asking me where the cheese was and so I told her. The next day I get a call from Nancy, who said a friend of a friend was missing in Canada. She gave me the description and I said, 'hey that's the girl I told where the cheese was in the market.' The Mounties are still looking for her, too.”

“Yeah, the main part of the search lasted about a week and a half,” Hannah continued. “I have to hand it to them, too...” Her voice trailed off and she turned her head to Frankie himself, who sighed through his nose. All I could think about was the death of his brother before the release of _Volume 8_. He lost his brother and I lost Kristina, who was sitting right there next to me. I figured I didn't have much time with her, especially since I had no idea what year it was.

All I knew was I had until that night in 1997 to take things deeper between the two of us.

“I have no way of driving there, either,” Hannah said. “Frankie drove us there and so I was stranded there in Toronto until Joey came to get me.”

“If we have to run there, I'll do it,” Frankie himself vowed. “I'll have to run to the Canadian border to find her.” He took another drink from his water glass, to which Hannah sniffled a bit.

“Will all of you excuse me for a second?” she asked with a break in her voice.

“Of course, of course,” I assured her.

“Yeah, go ahead,” Joey added. Hannah brushed away a tear from her eye and slid out of her chair. His face fell as he watched her run to the ladies' room on the other side of the room. I returned to Kristina, who was still silent.

“Hate to be in a situation like this,” I told her, to which she shook her head.

“Nothing we can do about it, though,” she said.

“Hang tight, guys,” Joey told us with a raise of his finger.

“Yeah, go ahead, Joey,” Nancy assured him. He stood to his feet and followed Hannah to the ladies' room. I returned to Kristina again.

“So—how are you?” I asked her in a low voice.

“I'm alright. Keepin' an eye on my guitar here.” She directed her attention to the guitar case leaned against the edge of the table: inside there was that beautiful guitar from our school days, or so that was my hope. “I'm hoping to compile an album of sorts.”

“Oh, yeah?” I raised my eyebrows at that and Frankie and Geddy brought their attention to her.

“Yeah. Just—kinda playin' it by ear, though. I want to be able to find the right window for recording and to find the appropriate studio for myself, too.”

“And this being New York, it's helluva waitin' list, too,” I told her. I knew the studio where we recorded _Persistence of Time_ had to still be intact. I figured I could salvage that, too, and perhaps keep it from burning down, and I could do that for Kristina. She could record there. At least, that was my hope for her.

I wanted her to have something to leave behind before she left the earth.


	4. soap

_Hannah’s point of view_

I hurried into the ladies' room just as the tears fell down my face. Lucky for me, I was alone in the room and thus I could stand before the sink. I stared at my own reflection, at the jet black hair about my head and down my back, at the brown eyes staring back at me as they riddled with hot tears. I felt sick to my stomach, but not sick enough to barf up something. I set my hands on the edges of the sink basin and let the tears fall down towards the drain. Frankie was out there in Canada somewhere, all by herself. She was smart, though: she knew how to get out of a jam and she was as good at logic as she was at art, hence why I made her my manager. She was as much my friend as she was my manager.

But she went missing in the dark, in the darkest part of town in Toronto, a city we had never been to no less. I had my hope that she just lost her sense of direction, but it seemed so unlike her to do such a thing.

I closed my eyes when I heard the door open. I didn't want someone to see me like this.

“Hannah?”

I lifted my head to see Joey in the doorway. I sniffled and brushed away a tear.

“Joey, you know you're not supposed to be in here,” was all I could say to him.

“I know, I know, I just—” he stopped, and then he ambled over to me.

“What?”

I could see his bottom lip trembling; his brown eyes were big and dilated, like big black holes.

“What?” I lowered my voice to a breathy tone. He lingered closer to me so I could smell that soft cologne on his neck. I looked down at his slim body, that body that I clicked with so long ago in school and felt so comfortable with, that body I loved to draw and make soft love to.

“I just wanna be the good boyfriend,” he whispered to me as he put his arms around me.

“You're more than the good boyfriend,” I assured him. “You've done everything you possibly could for me.”

I set a hand on his chest to feel his warmth and his softness. He was so thin and yet so soft to the touch.

“We're best friends for life,” I said to him in a broken voice.

“Always find me hot?” he asked me.

“Of course. Hotter than the surface of the sun. Hotter than an Iroquois sunrise.”

“And I'll always feel the same with you. I mean, you know Geddy Lee, for fuck's sake. That's—That's so hot.”

I sniffled and brushed away a tear with the back of my hand. “I met him through Nancy. I almost couldn't believe it was him when I saw him.”

I glanced down at the palm of my hand. They had just cleaned the room given the soapy fresh smell about us, but something about that sink basin there. I turned away from him to wash my hands with the strawberry smelling soap.

“That's such a good smell for ya,” he remarked.

“What, strawberry?” I asked him as I sniffled again.

“Yeah. 'Cause, like—you know. The whole thing with strawberries.” I peered in the reflection to see him with his arms behind his back and his head bowed. I chuckled at him as the warm water cascaded over my hands and washed the soap away. I switched off the water and turned to the paper towels. I dried off my hands with only two and then I turned to him with clean hands.

“Imagine your tongue right in between my thighs,” I whispered to him as I neared him again.

“How 'bout I do it for real?” he retorted, but then he glanced about the room. “We're not really in the best place for that, though.”

“At least it smells good in here,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, smells like they just cleaned in here.” He moved his head in closer to me for a pressing of his lips onto mine. Soft like pillows and sweet like ripe cherries. I set my hands on either side of his handsome face, to which he gasped.

“Cold?” I whispered to him.

“Quite. Not to say that's a bad thing, though.”

“I want you to be comfy, though.”

“Hannah, you know me. I'm Italian: we don't give a fuck. We give a good fucking.”

I felt my bra loosen up. Somehow, by some dark magic, he had slipped his hands underneath my shirt and unhooked me. Those brown eyes gazed back at me: they had gone from large with tears to being closed part of the way to hide that little twinkle. His smooth dark lips curled up into a little smile.

“Hey, watch it, Mister,” I scolded him.

“I wanna touch,” he begged me. “I wanna touch you.”

“I'm afraid I won't allow it.”

“Why not?” He made his voice sound small.

“Because I won't,” I teased him. I put my lips to his again. “Let's make love—you silly little mixed boy, you—”

“Here?” He looked shocked.

“Yes, here. Joey, it's not like someone took a big ol' sushi shit in here. If it's clean, I want it.”

“Unless you wanna suck my dick.”

“Nah. I'll make you put your tongue between my thighs before I suck your dick.”

He raised an eyebrow at me, which brought a chuckle out of me.

“I just wanna feel you,” I told him as I put my arms around his gorgeous slender waist. “I wanna feel you—”

“And I just wanna feel you some more,” he retorted as he leaned his back against the wall. I looked down to see him setting one foot on the wall as if he was holding me steady with one knee. “And maybe some more after that.”

I let my hands run up his back, right underneath his shirt.

“Kiss me,” he begged me in a husky voice.

“Only if you kiss me.” He put his lips onto mine, and that time he locked on good and hard. His body became both my bed as well as my teddy bear. I wanted Francine back but I had Joey with me; every kiss on my lips was so soft and gentle that I wanted to come in closer and closer to him. I could feel him growing warmer between his legs. Inviting me inside...

I slipped in a little bit of tongue into his mouth, which forced a harder breath out of him.

“Hannah?” Nancy's voice caught my ear, but I didn't care. I missed Francine and I had Joey there with me. I moved one hand towards his stomach to feel the softness and silkiness of his skin there. Like a fresh cup of coffee, or a little cup of melted dark chocolate.

I was ready to undo his jeans when the bathroom door swung open. I closed my eyes as Nancy emerged there in the bathroom. All I could hear was the sounds of the cafe out there and Joey's steady breathing. I caught a glimmer of Scott's big Queens accent saying something but I cared more about Joey than anything at that moment. I wanted him to take me away, to keep me there in our little pocket of silence, and I wanted him to consume me and to experience me. And I wanted to consume him and experience him.

“I'll leave the two of you alone,” she said with an eager tone to her voice, and the door closed behind her.

Once we were alone again, I let go of Joey's lips and gazed into his big brown eyes. I noticed the sight of the faint blush on his cheekbones.

“Yeah, this isn't really the best place for that,” I said to him.

“I'm kinda hungry, too,” he confessed.

“Okay, big boy—” I patted his stomach and gave him another kiss on the lips before we stepped out of there. No sooner had he held the door for me than when I felt the straps of my bra slack and almost slide down my shoulders.


	5. lights

_Scott's point of view_

I watched Kristina return to her seat next to me with her long platinum blonde hair drifting behind her head. Her eyes scanned over me as if she was waiting for me to say something to her. She had a glimmer in her eyes like she had just witnessed something or other.

“What?” I asked her.

“Nothing.” She shook her head, but I knew there was something on her mind, though. She had seen something back there near the bathrooms. Nancy followed suit into the seat across from her. I glanced over at Geddy, who shrugged his shoulders at me. There was a part of me that wanted to touch and run my hands down the smoothest parts of his hair, right on top of his head.

To think that Frankie and I were alone with him for a little bit. It was just a few minutes but it was enough for the both of us to forget about everything for a little bit.

I turned back to Kristina, who showed me a grin, the first time I had seen her grin in forever and a day.

“You saw something back there, didn't you,” Frankie teased her.

“Maybe.”

Nancy slid back into the seat next to Geddy with a warm blush upon her face. From behind those glasses, I noticed a baffled look in his eye.

“What?” she asked him.

“Is everything alright?” he asked her.

“Yeah.”

“You sure? Your face is flushed and you're breathing hard.”

Joey and Hannah breezed back into the room right then: he had a smirk on his face while she smelled of strawberries and her face was bright pink like a single strawberry.

“What the hell is going here,” I demanded.

“It's not what it looks like,” Hannah assured me.

“I'm pretty sure it is,” I teased her.

“It's not,” Joey joined in, still with a smirk on his face.

“It's NOT, you mean,” I teased him with a wag of my finger, and I couldn't resist the smirk on my face, either.

“Yeah, it's NOT. A big ol' thick NOT.”

“It's a big ol' thick 'not' like your dick,” Hannah murmured as she brought her cup of coffee to her lips.

“Not here!” Joey scoffed in a hushed voice.

I cleared my throat and returned to Geddy.

“So what we were talkin' about earlier?” I asked him in a loud voice.

“Oh, you mean going up to retrace dear Francine's steps?” he asked me back, also in a loud voice.

“Yeah...” I turned my head to Joey and Hannah, both of whom had picked up their cups of coffee for drinks on their parts.

“Which means we'll have to head on up to Rochester,” Frankie followed along; his expression turned solemn right then.

“Rochester and then to 'Swaygo and Syracuse,” Joey filled in right then as he held his coffee cup before his chest.

“Seems like a lot,” Kristina remarked.

“We've been around a lot of places upstate and here in the City,” Hannah pointed out. “I'm sure the cops have the City covered, though.”

“And then?” Nancy asked.

“And then?” Hannah echoed.

“We'll have to go up to Toronto then,” Geddy suggested.

“We'll have to,” Hannah pointed out. “There's no other way otherwise.”

Geddy raised his glass such that the overhead lights hit the dark cola in the glass to make it look bright red.

“To Francine,” he declared.

“To Francine,” the each of us followed suit, and we took a drink in unison. It seemed like a lot but we each had come to this point in time for a reason. For me, it was to reconnect with Kristina in the time she had left. I had to make it right before she tied the noose around her neck in the next decade.

“I caught Joey and Hannah making out in the bathroom,” Nancy blurted out, to which Frankie almost gagged on his drink.

“Nancy!” Geddy scoffed.

“What? I did! Kristina did, too.”

“I was just going to use the ladies' room,” Kristina filled in, “I didn't even see them 'til I was washing my hands and Hannah was making little whimpery noises.”

“Gonna need some water over here!” Joey called out to the waitress.

After our bite to eat, we all filed out into the cold afternoon. I huddled closer to Kristina and that big guitar case on her back. It almost seemed unnecessary to be near her, especially since we were all here to seek out Francine. And yet, Frankie and I came back to reconnect. Reconnect before the sands in the hourglass ran out.

“So where do you hope you'll record at?” I asked her over the rush of the cold winds.

“Electric Lady of course,” she answered: even though it was overcast, the daylight shone over that crown of blonde hair to make it appear as though it was made of silver. Bright head of silver with smokey dark eyes. She adjusted the strap on her shoulder to make the case stay on her back.

“I hope I can find an opening soon,” I told her. “And I hope we can find an opening to listen in, too. I'd love to listen to you record a record.”

I returned to Nancy and Geddy, both of whom were huddled close together against the winds.

“I hope the Mounties don't stop us when we're up there,” she confessed to him.

“They won't, my dear,” he vowed to her. “As long as you have proof and you have a way into there, you can traverse about all over the place.”

“We've got an actual Canadian with us, too,” I joined in.

“You've got a Canadian with you, too!” he said with a tone of glee.

“We'll stop by that li'l upholstery place, too,” Joey pointed out. “Say how ya doin' to Marcia and Sonia and see if they can give us some clothes if we wanna.”

“You just want to see Hannah try on some clothes,” Kristina cracked.

“Well, I won't deny it,” he said with a shrug and a tucking of his hands into his coat pockets. He then peered up to the sky overhead. I followed his gaze to a series of drones, pitch dark against the light gray sky. Even from far down below, I could make out the sight of the green and blue neon on their undersides.

I turned my head to Kristina, as she set her guitar case on the sidewalk. She opened the case and took out her guitar, a bright cherry red acoustic with a narrow black neck and a white star painted on the end of the body.

“Beauty!” Geddy declared.

“I named her Cherise,” Kristina said with a twinkle in her eye. She held her hand over the strings and strummed with her thumb and her index finger. It took me a second to realize what she was playing, to which the memory came flooding back to me.

“'Planet Caravan,'” I said, and I couldn't help but smirk.

“We're just missing some snow,” she replied with a raise of her eyebrow. She never actually broke out into singing but she did play that hypnotic riff that haunted me since I was a kid.

The perfect song to go finding a girl missing in Canada to no less.

I peered up at the drones in the sky again, and then I caught sight of a smooth white humanlike head near the top of the apartment building. I was wondering where all the humans here had disappeared to, because aside from the waitress, the few patrons, and the line cook there in the cafe, the city streets seemed far more deserted than ever before. It almost felt like a dream to be on an otherwise crowded city street, only to find everyone had all but vanished.

As Kristina let the music drift over the street and the sidewalk, I glanced down the street to a few more drones appearing out from behind the apartment complexes.

“Makes me wish we had Lars and his little radar detector again,” Joey muttered under his breath.

“I really hope she's alright,” Frankie whispered to me.

“We'll find her, man,” I promised him, even though I had no idea as to where to look from that point onward. “I have hope that we will.”

All I knew was we had to find our way out of that part of the city and get on upstate. But then there was Kristina, who continued to strum and play to that familiar song. I missed Pearl but there was something about her I had missed. She was the first girl I ever fell in love with and then much like Joey and Hannah, we were separated by circumstance.

It was now or never at that point. Balance out finding Francine with reconnecting with Kristina.

“Where do you live now?” I asked her. She kept strumming but she looked at me with raised eyebrows.

“Boston,” she replied.

“All the way over in beautiful Bahstahn,” Frankie cracked.

“Bahstahn, exactly!” Kristina laughed. “It's a little out of the way, though, if you guys wanna come swing by at some point.”

“Makes me wish we had Lars and that arrowhead of his,” Joey spoke again.

“Wait a minute, don't you have that?” Hannah asked him.

“The arrowhead?” Joey hesitated for a second and then he patted down the front of his coat. He slipped one hand down into his right pocket and took out a stone arrowhead about the size of a silver dollar.

“Don't think there's a wormhole from Syracuse to Boston, but you can make one with this li'l thing here, Scott,” he explained. “Just—be really careful, though, 'cause ghosts and other scary ass things can go through 'em.”

“Ghosts?” Frankie sputtered.

“Ghosts, yeah.”

“How can I forget 'Vera',” Hannah grumbled.

“Forget Vera for a second, what about Mrs. Snow?” Joey recalled. “She tried to whack my dick off after she caught us in bed together.”

“I liked the old man, though,” she continued. “What was his name?”

“Mr. Lang. He gives me apples all the time.”

“There are also mutant banana slugs down in New Orleans and big ass spiders in both Syracuse and Rochester,” Nancy chimed in. “'Syracuse spiders' as Marcia and Sonia call them.”

“And water snakes and scorpions up on the Canadian side of the Great Lakes, too,” Geddy added.

“And all of those and more over in Seattle, too,” Nancy continued, “as poor Dominique will tell you...”

“You sure they're scorpions and not vinegaroons, Ged?” Hannah asked him.

“They're definitely scorpions. Great Lake Emperors, they're called. And yes, they are as every bit of terrifying as you can possibly imagine because unlike actual emperors, they're actually quite aggressive. I think there are vinegaroons up there but I haven't seen any. I don't think Alex and Neil have, either.”

What a world I came into! I turned back to Kristina as Joey dropped the arrowhead into my palm.

“You better not have weird creatures over in Boston,” I told her.

“Giant seabirds, but otherwise, not really.”

“How giant are we talkin'?”

“Giant enough to take a whole loaf of bread from you, but they're not like—giant aggressive scorpions, though. They're quite lovely, actually.” She continued to strum her guitar, to which I took another look up to the drones in the sky. The green and blue neon waxed and waned with the gray clouds overhead, and I wondered if there were any more around there. I didn't want to leave Kristina there in the City by her lonesome, especially since I had no idea where she even parked.

“So, shall we get a move on, eh?” I suggested in a slight fake Canadian accent.

“Get a move on, eh,” Geddy scoffed with a smirk. “Take off, ya hoser.”


	6. blizzards

__

_Nancy's point of view_

I had come into upstate New York hot on the heels of my break up with Chris but there was a part of my story that I had neglected to share with the others. I had my fear of speaking out about it because I had no idea how any of them would react to it. I had no idea if it was even in the same vein as Francine's disappearance, given the fact she had gone missing in Canada.

But after I had my fight with Chris and we broke things off, I packed my bags and bailed from Seattle. I thought of going down to Portland and getting a job at that bakery, Smell the Magic, especially since it was the first one ever in the chain spread across the country, but I had received a phone call from Marcia in Rochester, who asked me to come back East. It was so far away, but I made the move alone, with nothing more than my paint palettes and the clothes on my back. Dominique vowed to find me a place, especially since she was continuing to shadow Angeline at the _New York Times_ in New York City itself.

I had my doubts of moving to that city, especially after everything that had happened to Joey and Lars there, but I was willing to be closer to my best friend, and in Chris' wake, it would prove to be a new chapter for me. I boarded the next flight out of there, and I couldn't get away from there soon enough given the neon and the ghosts were appearing throughout Seattle like some kind of virus. Even though Joey had saved us all the week before, we were having to deal with such rapid repercussions up there in the Northwest. It wasn't just a testament of leaving Chris behind, but I needed a cleansing of sorts. To leave the area I knew so well for a place that I hoped wasn't falling apart, either. Portland wasn't dealing with it all per se, but I wasn't willing to risk it, especially since Smell the Magic never called me back.

I had a stopover in Denver and then another one in Winnipeg of all places, and that was where I met Geddy and his band mates.

I landed in Winnipeg at about six o'clock in the evening their time. Given it was the middle of the January, and about two weeks before that current day of seeking out Francine, it was absolutely dumping snow over the region.

I was beginning to regret the move from the very second I stepped off the plane. Snow drifts the size of a garage piled on either side of the runway and I had to spend the night in the airport, or at least until the blizzard stopped and those bitter Arctic winds calmed down enough for us to fly to New York City. At least I didn't land in Nunavut, where the mercury lay on the floor given the extent of the cold, at least that was according to the security guard I spoke to when I asked him where customs was to check my passport. He was also kind enough to tell me about a little restaurant next door to the airport given it was dinner time.

But my little sweater coupled with my skirt and tights proved to be not enough against the Canadian blizzard.

No mountains to protect me and no significant body of water like the Puget Sound to temper it: I was a Seattle girl exposed to a full on, bone chilling, unforgiving wind tunnel straight out of the Arctic. I had reached the restaurant when I met a tall stout man with a short haircut, so short that he was nearly bald. He looked like a movie star with the deep cleft in his chin and the even deeper clefts in his cheeks when he saw me. Right next to him stood his wife, if I recalled correctly. At least, that was my assumption: a little olive skinned lady with horn rimmed glasses and tight waves of black hair over her shoulders.

“Pretty cold out there, isn't it?” he asked me in a big booming voice.

“Yeah—Yeah, I'll say,” I replied, out of breath.

“You're not from around here, are you?”

“Just flew in from Seattle. I'm on my way to New York City.”

“Fuck New York, stay in Canada,” he said. I should have listened to my instinct, as it told me he wasn't Canadian. But he and his new wife were both kind enough to me that I was willing to share my dinner with them: he was a musician down on his luck while she had been widowed a few months before, and yet they both met one another by circumstance. I never found out their names, but I knew their son was going to be named Noah.

“They say you shouldn't form a bond out of an intense experience,” she remarked, “but we did anyways.” They had tied the knot down in Las Vegas and flew up to Winnipeg when the snow hit. The assumption was that he hailed from Manitoba there, but I never found out about her.

All I knew was I took a drink of cola and I didn't recall anything else after that.

And there I was, riding in the back of his car on the way to the middle of nowhere. To the middle of the snows.

It was pitch dark outside, but all I felt was cold. Cold and bitter. And then I felt something touching my legs and ankles. I had no idea if it was from the snow or from something else, but the next thing I knew I had woken up somewhere.

Somewhere I didn't know where. All I recalled was the sight of a cold gray sky over me, complete with big smooth lenticular clouds the color of cotton candy and wispy clouds that looked as though they carried rain, and a loud beeping noise off in the distance right in my right ear.

I could barely keep my eyes open, but the noise of the street was enough to keep me alert enough. I wanted to move but I couldn't. No pain. No feeling in my legs. And I had no idea what had happened to my belongings, either.

I closed my eyes. I wanted to scream but I didn't know if I had one inside of me.

I nibbled on my bottom lip. All I could feel was the cold earth beneath me. The cold earth as nothing more than my bed.

“Oh, shit! Shit!” That Canadian accent stayed with me even as I was on the brink of delirious oblivion. I lowered my gaze a bit; I couldn't even so much as lift my head to see the three boys down the street from me. But I could hear them. I could hear the one who yelled that out run towards me.

“Alex! Neil! Get over here, guys! This chick's in bad shape!”

I was drifting out again, but I recalled seeing their three silhouettes standing over me. I could hardly make out the sight of their faces but I knew it was them. I saw a head of dark smooth hair and a hooked beak of a nose even through my blurred vision.

“Oh, my God,” another boy's deep voice caught my ear. I blinked once, twice, and then their silhouettes took on a better shape over me.

“Are you alright, Miss?” he had asked me. I could feel the touch of his cold hands on either side of my face. I blinked several times to make sight of his handsome narrow face and his somber deep set brown eyes gazing back at me with concern.

“Are you alright?” he repeated. I swallowed.

“I don't know,” I replied. “Where—Where am I?”

“Outside of the Toronto airport,” he said in a gentle tone of voice. “I saw you laying here and I knew you were in bad shape—” He glanced down at my body and grimaced. Neil, with his dark waves and pencil thin mustache, crouched down to my left and spread his big heavy black overcoat over my body. He then turned his head behind them.

“Alex! Get the Mounties!” He then returned to me.

“Do you remember anything?” he continued; he was practically laying on the sidewalk right next to me.

“I—I don't,” I confessed. My hips and thighs were in utter agony. It felt like someone took a sledgehammer to my lower back and utterly shattered every bone in my spine. I worried about even so much as moving my legs, or wiggling my toes.

“I was—I was in Winnipeg,” I said to him.

“You were in Winnipeg?” the other boy echoed me. “Do you remember what day?”

“Monday the sixteenth.”

“Monday?” He raised his eyebrows at that.

“Today's Friday the twentieth,” said the boy closest to me.

“Four—Four days?” I stammered; my mouth and the back of my throat felt as dry and parched as sandpaper.

“Good God, you must be starving and thirsty!” he proclaimed. The whine of sirens off in the distance caught my ear.

“It's okay, though—help is one its way,” the boy with the deep voice assured me. Indeed, the ambulance arrived within a minute or so, but it felt like a whole decade before they lifted me off of the ground and lay me upon a stretcher. All three boys, including the blond one, whom I found out was named Alex and the one who called the ambulance, congregated around me. The closest boy lingered closer to me once the doors closed behind them.

“It's okay, though,” he assured me, “we'll take care of you.” He held my hand once the doors of the ambulance closed behind us. “What's your name by the way?”

“Nancy,” I said.

“Nancy—I'm Geddy.”

“Geddy?” I thought my ears were messing with me.

“Yeah. It's a mispronunciation of 'Gary' courtesy of my mom—she's from Poland so she's got plenty of an accent even a couple of decades after migrating here. Everyone calls me that, though.”

It was that moment in the back of the ambulance that sparked the beginning of a beautiful relationship. Not as homey and sweet as Joey and Hannah, two childhood best friends, or as mysterious as Scott and Kristina. It was something to spite that couple in the restaurant in Winnipeg. The three of them stood by my side as the medics checked me out and released me within the day. My stuff was gone and those two had cleaned me out, but I did remember Dominique's number. Much like Joey and Hannah, she hurried across the border to come save me. But before I returned to the States, Geddy vowed to come visit me in time.

Never start a relationship in the face of intensity. That was something I had to laugh at even as we were driving out of New York City. I knew for a fact it wasn’t the two of them who took Francine, but the whole thing stirred up something within me.


	7. bottles

_Scott's point of view_

We were headed on out of the heart of New York City and even the very second we made our way in the direction of the old neighborhood that I grew up in, the same old freeway and turn off out to Queens, I wished for my phone to take a video of it all. Just take the video of the neighborhood in this era and then fuse it with video from the time of the pandemic.

Share it with Kristina before she went. I wanted her to see the world following her passing. When she had gone away.

It was me, Geddy, Nancy, and Frankie in that one car, and I sat in the passenger seat. I wondered how Joey and Hannah were doing in the car behind us.

It was quite the sight to see, everything back in its proper place, and a little odd to find the silhouettes of the Twin Towers looming over us. If anything, I felt the whole thing to be dangerous: Frankie and I could come right out and say that the September eleventh attacks would take place, and we wouldn't have to undergo the whole ordeal with our band name. Dangerous and yet it could change everything.

I could foresee my hair falling out by the roots. I could keep it all from happening.

I had it in the palm of my hand. All of it right there before me.

I thought back to a conversation I had with Joey a few years prior to the pandemic, where he mentioned continuing to sing with us after the release of _Persistence of Time_ , and I wholeheartedly agreed with him. I agreed with him there as I sat there in the passenger seat next to Nancy. I could hear him nailing songs like “Only” and “Black Lodge” the first time around given the maturation of his voice.

We never gave Joey a chance in that following decade. I never gave him a chance. And I never gave Kristina a chance, either. But I was there again, back within the context of things, and back within my own footsteps to give it another redo. I was there to make it right among other things.

Frankie sniffled and I could hear Geddy saying something to him. I peered out the windshield at the sight of the rain beginning to fall down onto the glass and the windows. I dipped my head to see the blue and green neon glowing against the dark overcast sky.

I fingered the arrowhead in my pocket. Joey gave me something to visit Kristina whenever I pleased. I nibbled on my bottom lip and I thought of thanking him once again once the opportunity arose. I could thank Joey for everything, not just for the arrowhead but for giving his voice to us.

At the same time, there was a tiny voice in the back of my mind that told me we never would have received Joey's solo work, either. We never would have felt his heart and soul in his own endeavors.

I looked over at Nancy and the glazed over look in her eyes. I wondered about her, too. I wondered about things back home in Seattle and if she thought of going back. I had no idea why I would feel curious about that sort of thing, but then again, it was my own aged mind talking. The fact that I had developed and matured inside of my mind, I had gone through all the motions of working in the music industry and dealing with heartbreak and birth of Revel, and yet I had returned to my twenty odd year old body. No aches and no pains.

I took another glimpse over at Nancy again and the deer in headlights look in her eyes as she took the next onramp onto the freeway.

“You okay?” I asked her.

“Hm?” She raised her eyebrows and turned her head towards me for a few seconds.

“You okay?” I repeated.

“Yeah.” She furrowed her eyebrows at the question.

“Um—penny for your thoughts? Mind me asking?”

She hesitated for a second, and then she pursed her lips together.

“Thinking about Francine in particular. I'm also thinking about Seattle, too.”

“Do you miss it over there?” I asked her.

“Not really, if I'm being honest. This is a new adventure for me, so it's not as bad as one would think, either.”

“You're living with Dominique, too. That's her name, right?”

“Dominique, yeah. She works—interns, I should say—at the _New York Times_.”

“Wow,” Frankie remarked in a broken voice.

“Yeah, I have no idea how she got it, either,” she confessed, “especially when we lived over there in Seattle.”

“So every reason to move on over here to the East Coast,” I followed along.

“Every reason—especially after the near collapse over everything that way. All the neon and robotics rising up here pales in comparison to what's going on over there in Seattle—and it's taken quite the hold here in New York state.”

“Up in Canada, too,” Geddy added.

“It's up in Canada, too?” I asked him with a glimpse in the side mirror.

“It's weird—it's like everything in Toronto and the smaller surrounding areas turned rustic and then the neon swooped in like a parasite, if you will.”

“Not sure about Seattle, though,” Nancy confessed. “And we're not gonna see it, but there's a good part of New York City—and there's a little part of Syracuse and Albany, too—with some neon emerging.”

“What even is it?” I asked her. “Do you and Dominique know?”

“It's just a sign that it exists—or at least, that's what Dominique found out, anyway...” Her voice trailed off. A fluttery feeling in my stomach emerged right then. I had come into the whole thing without knowing about anything before. I rubbed my eyes.

I thought about the protocol: not to touch the eyes, the nose, or the mouth, and to wash everything down. I had no phone and my mask was gone, too. Frankie and I could sit there in that seats without our masks on hand and without either of us having to worry about the disease spreading throughout the land, or between the two of us.

Hannah flashed the headlights of the car behind us: the second time she flashed them I caught sight of it. I recognized the lower part of the skyline outside of New York City.

“Think she needs something,” Geddy said aloud.

“Yeah, I think so, too,” Nancy added, as she took the next exit. For once in my life, I could not recognize that part of New York City because of the sheer amount dilapidation on the buildings: the ones closest to the freeway looked to be made of old wood and crumbling bricks; even at a quick pace, I could make out the sight of their foundations falling apart. Falling apart and yet I could make sight of something trying to hold it erect like the roots of trees. Keep it up from what appeared to be from the ground up.

Nancy brought us to a gas station on one side of the side street, to which Hannah and Joey followed suit behind us. We took to the curb on the side, while the two of them parked behind us.

Frankie and I climbed out of the car first. Hannah stepped out of the driver's seat with her hands clasping to her coat collar.

“We're both dying of thirst,” she told us.

“Oh, I see,” Frankie chuckled that. Joey climbed out as Hannah rounded the front fender of the car to speak to him. He said something to her, and then she nodded at him. He said something else, to which she burst out laughing.

“I've got to get a new checkbook anyways,” she confessed to him. She then turned to me with her eyes squinted against the fine rain over us.

“You guys want anything?” she asked us.

“Just a little thing of water,” Frankie said.

“I'm good, thank you, Hannah.”

She nodded and padded away from there, to which Joey climbed out of the passenger seat. I turned to Nancy and Geddy behind me in the car.

“Uh—” I paused for a second. That was my chance. “—what's the date?” I asked Nancy.

“The twenty fifth.”

“The twenty fifth—”

“Happy birthday, Danny!” Joey proclaimed. It was January! What year to be specific was a question for another day. I hoped we would see him and Charlie again at some point.

Joey ambled over to us with his hands tucked into his coat pockets and his dark curly head bowed against the rain. He turned his head towards the gas station, which appeared perfectly fine, not a place crumbling apart at the seams with roots.

“You did so much for us in Seattle,” Nancy said to him once he came within earshot.

“I dunno 'bout that,” he confessed with a shrug of his shoulders.

“You really did!” she insisted. “I believe in you, Joey. I believe you'll help us out in finding Francine.”

“I'll show the way around Canada if you wish,” Geddy offered; a soft blush crossed Joey's face.

“I'll need a li'l bit of that,” he admitted with a little quiver to his voice. I remembered when we brought Joey into Anthrax as a young man in his early twenties who hadn't even so much as flown on an airplane. I truly wanted to know the year at that moment.

“That was quick,” Frankie spoke out of the blue. I turned my head to find Hannah hurrying back to us with a bottle of coffee, a bottle of tea, and a bottle of water cradled in her arms.

“I move quickly,” she retorted.

“She moves quickly for a big girl,” Joey added with a smirk on his face.

“Here, Frankie—take this—” She nodded at the bottle of water tucked in her left elbow, to which Frankie took the bottle out.

“Oh, careful!” She almost dropped the bottles onto the ground.

“Oh, and Joey?” I called after him over Hannah and Frankie's laughing.

“Yeah?” He raised his dark eyebrows at me. He was really just a big kid, and Hannah standing there next to me and me only added to it. Just a boy and a girl.

“Thank you,” I said to him. To which his face appeared thoughtful, and even soft, softer than I had ever seen him before. Hannah tapped on his shoulder which brought his attention back to her. He showed her a sweet smile and then he returned to me with a wink.

“I'm getting soaked here,” Frankie complained.

“We're gonna get even more wet the further we go up north,” Nancy pointed out. She turned back to Geddy once I climbed back into the passenger seat. “Right?”

“Exactly!”


	8. (buttons), pins, and needles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _“I feel her heart beating in me,  
>  get her out of me...”_  
> -“anything like me”, poppy

_Frank's point of view_

Syracuse looked very different that afternoon, as did Rochester. I never really went out that way that much, but there was always something about it that struck me sideways. Maybe it had to do with Joey hailing from near there, maybe it had to do with the ghoulish blue and green neon rising up from the tops of the buildings, maybe it had to do with the fact it was its own thing aside from New York City, but there was something precious about it to me. There was a part of me that said Francine hid out somewhere in there, somewhere inside of that donut surrounding the outskirts of the city.

I wondered if she knew that I wanted to find her after she went missing, and I wondered if she knew that I wanted to find her even after the trail fell cold. The murder trail on my brother fell cold, but I refused to let it go cold on her. She was my girl, my first girl, and she was Hannah's best friend aside from Joey.

But on the other hand, she might have been up in Canada. The only explanation for me was that she went missing in Canada, and therefore she stayed in Canada. There was no way she hid out there in upstate New York. And yet I knew it. I just knew it: she was there.

I peered over my shoulder to the car behind us. I thought about Hannah and her friendship with Francine: all I knew from Francine's account was she met Hannah when they attended school together and they just gelled like they were sisters. Both of them had no siblings so it made sense that they became like sisters: they also both had it rough a bit in life. Hannah was the California girl relocated to New York and grew up feeling like an outsider until she met Joey in her second year there in Oswego.

Francine had parents who wanted to separate but they stayed together for her. She sought solace in the arts from a young age and when she and Hannah attended high school in Rochester together, she took it to an almost cathartic. I recalled when first meeting her after Hannah introduced the five of us to her, that she foresaw everyone in Rochester knowing the combined force of nature that was Hannah Ellsberg and Francine Moody. And it almost came to a point shortly after Joey joined in the lead singer position.

We all saw Francine's agony in her artistry and yet she almost always checked out on a mental level most of the time. Hannah wanted her to be her manager for that reason: she could mentally check out and detach herself from the dark side of everything, and get a handle on everything. A great artist and protective of her best friend in her artistry herself, such that she was willing to promote it. She knew how to hook someone's attention, and it came to a point where she could by using nothing more than her own name. Maybe it was her last name: there was something memorable about the name of Moody, like Belladonna or even Bello, my last name.

I had just barely met Nancy but that was my assumption, too: who else would leave Seattle for the East Coast for anything, and strike up something with Geddy Lee among other things? All I could assume was these three women were sisters bonded by art and the scars of their own pasts.

I thought about Joey in that car with Hannah. Speaking of gelling... the fact the two of them had been able to bond and separate several times throughout the years always made me wonder abou them. Best friends since childhood and yet they managed to strike it up on a romantic level time and time again. It was something I had always wanted with Francine, and watching the Rochester skyline emerge through the darkening rain clouds made me wonder if it would even be possible.

She was out there somewhere and I had no idea if she had any time left.

Nancy led us to the first exit to the southern side of town, where I spotted a couple of people walking along the sidewalk as if it was a regular sunny day there in upstate New York, even though the rain was starting to come down in sheets upon our heads.

“Is that Alex and Neil?” Scott wondered aloud.

“No way,” Geddy said; his voice cut through me like a knife right there in the seat next to me. I took a second look at the two people there on the sidewalk, who appeared to be shuffling about the dampening concrete like a couple of puppets. A couple of puppets in short sleeved shirts and cut off shorts despite the cold rain. I swore I saw a bit of the neon glowing out from their heads, but then again, it could have been nothing more than my imagination doing that to me.

We reached the street corner and that was when the rain really began to fall upon us; Nancy flicked on the windshield wipers and they squeaked with each and every swish at the rain water.

“Okay—now if I remember where it's at...” Her voice trailed off as she hung a right around the corner. She ran into a puddle which had began to swell with the rain, but it wasn't large enough to warrant a huge splash.

“Do you even know Marcia and Sonia are in today?” Geddy asked her with a clearing of his throat.

“Positive,” she replied with a glimpse in the rear view mirror at him, “otherwise, I guarantee we wouldn't be going this way.” I noticed Scott peering out the windshield for himself, even though neither him nor I had any idea as to what to look for. “I'm pretty sure it's here—oh, wait, hang on, Hannah's flashing her lights at us again.”

“Sew Into You!” Geddy exclaimed right then.

“Oh, good eyes, babe!” Nancy followed up as she pulled up to the next intersection to flip a turn. She pulled up to the curb and yanked on the parking lever, and killed the engine right then. The rain pattered on the roof overhead; I watched Hannah and Joey park up ahead of us through the streams of rain water flowing down the outside of the glass.

Geddy and I climbed out of the backseat at the same time and onto the soaked pavement outside; he bowed his head and squinted his eyes against the rain. Nancy joined us outside with the hood of her jacket.

“I forgot my umbrella,” he confessed to her over the roar of the rain. Scott climbed out and led me to the car up ahead to join Hannah and Joey. There was a little bright lit shop behind us: tulles of fabric rested in the front window; beyond that stood a rack of tulles of thread.

“This is that upholstery shop we were talking about,” Nancy said from behind us.

“Let's go in and meet Marcia and Sonia,” Joey joined in right then. He lunged forward and held the door for us. We were greeted by the smell of clean brand new fabric and lemons; indeed, I spotted a pair of girls near the back of the front room both donned in heavy dark sweaters; they appeared to be talking about something about those fat quarters on the table in front of them. The one on the left had a hot pink headband across the crown of her head to separate her bangs from the rest of her straight jet black hair; while the one on the right had a messy head of hair to accentuate her round face. They both looked like twins regardless.

“Marcia, Marcia, Marcia,” Joey called out to one of them. The girl with the headband turned towards us, and her face lit up at the sight of us.

“Hey, you guys!” she declared as she set the two fat quarters on the table before her. “I was hoping you'd show up soon enough.” The girl on the left turned towards us and her eyes twinkled at the sight of Scott and me.

“Who are these two good looking bucks?” she asked Hannah and Joey.

“Scott and Frankie,” Joey replied with a running of his fingers through his jet black curls. “Two of the dudes from my gig.”

“Oh, the amazing Scott and Frankie,” the girl with the headband said with a toss of her hair back over her shoulder. She sauntered over to us, and towards Geddy.

“Hello, darling,” he greeted her with a little grin and a kiss on the side of the face, “good to see you again.”

“How's Alex and Neil?”

“Back home relaxing.”

“Please tell Neil I said hi,” Sonia said to him with a smile upon her face.

“Oh, you know I will,” he assured her as he gave her a kiss hello on the side of the face, “but I don't know if he will, though.” He turned his attention to the rest of the shop. “I never really saw the rest of this shop, if I'm honest.”

“By the way, Joey?” Marcia spoke up.

“Yeah?”

“How's that little outfit that I made for you?”

“Needs to be cleaned,” he said.

“She made you something?” Hannah asked him with a grin on her face.

“A little checkerboard thing.”

“We could make you two a quilt,” Marcia told Geddy and Nancy, “if you wish, anyways.”

“You guys are looking for Francine, right?” Sonia asked Scott and me.

“Yeah, we're—we're kinda helping,” Scott filled in.

“She was my girlfriend,” I added.

“Your girlfriend?”

“Yeah.”

She nibbled on her bottom lip: she had these deep olive colored eyes that comforted me in the same vein Francine's baby blues always did. She then raised a finger at me and motioned for me to follow her. She led me to the right side of the room while Marcia talked to the others there; Sonia led me to a rack full of different types of buttons. She showed me a little packet of silver buttons about the size of silver dollars. I took a second look to see a vein of neon green inside of the four holes in the middle.

“Don't tell anyone about this,” she whispered to me, “but these are for fixing humans.”

“Humans?” I echoed in a hushed voice.

“They're special buttons crafted over in Schenectady. They're crafted so all the robots can stay within intact—at least, that's according to Lars.” She handed the buttons for me.

“Why do you think I should need these?” I asked her.

“Keep them just in case,” she advised me. “The way things are right now, it's best to go about well equipped.” I sighed through my nose and put the buttons in my coat pocket.

“The world's going to fall apart soon,” she said, “believe me when I say that, too. I'm just saying that right now—you're going to have to find Francine before it's too late.”

I thought about the pandemic, three decades after that moment of time. Like Scott, I had no idea what year it was, but other than the date itself. And yet, she could have been referring to something else.

Something about Joey having done something huge in Seattle when neither of us were looking…

Marcia called out Sonia's name and she strode past me to meet up with her. She left alone there next to the buttons, so I could eye the blue ones next to my knee. Baby blues, like Francine's eyes.

“I'll tear up the earth until I find you,” I muttered under my breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that final line is a quote from miguel hernandez's poem “elegy”


	9. buttons, (pins), and needles

_Scott's point of view_

“All the best pins you can possibly think of, my friend,” said Marcia as she set down a small glass box of pins down on the wooden table before us. I stood next to Nancy at this large heavy wooden table covered in spare fabric and sewing tools: I noticed a small stack of checkerboard fat quarters in front of Joey and Hannah, the latter of whom picked up a black and white square the size of a dinner plate and held it before her.

“Why would I want pins?” Geddy asked her as he ran his fingers through a piece of that smooth hair on the side of his head.

“Why not?” Nancy followed it up.

“To think Marcia and Sonia made you and Lars outfits outta these,” Hannah remarked to Joey in a low voice.

“It fit him quite well if I do say so myself,” Marcia pointed out. I watched Hannah hold the fabric closer to her and run the surface of it with the tips of her fingers. She was feeling the texture of the checkers. She then let the fabric unfurl down her chest; she held it there as if checking to see how it would look on herself.

“The black and white goes well with your complexion,” Nancy pointed out; indeed, it did. It went almost hand in hand with Hannah's olive complexion.

“That blue and white one would go well, too,” Marcia noted, “the two of them would look so cute with their outfits paired together!”

“Except mine had kind of a li'l low neckline,” Joey recalled with a gesture to his chest, “and it buttoned up, too.”

Hannah's face lit up at the sound of that.

“I wanna see it,” she declared with an eager tone to her voice.

“I wanna see it again, too,” said Marcia.

“Li'l fashion show with Mr. Joey,” Geddy cracked.

“The party doesn't start 'til Mr. Joey shows up,” Joey announced. Sonia strode into the room right behind him and Hannah with her lips pursed and her expression serious.

“Right, Sonia?” Joey asked her with a twinkle in his eye, albeit one that he only showed to Hannah.

“Right, what?”

“The party doesn't start 'til Mr. Joey shows up.”

“Oh yeah!” She flashed a glimpse over at Hannah and I wondered what both women were thinking.

“His little tum was peeking out, too,” Sonia added as she stood on Joey's other side; she gestured to his waist. Her finger was quite close to his body, and she gestured close to his hip bones and the lower part of his waist. What happened here when none of us were looking? Moreover, what happened here when Hannah wasn't looking?

Marcia and Sonia then peered at one another with smirks on their faces.

“We should make all these guys and gals ensembles, sis,” Sonia suggested.

“Agreed.”

“Could you perhaps fashion me a hat?” Geddy requested.

“What kind of a hat?”

“Nice little porkpie to go with his long flowing locks, maybe?” said Nancy.

“Well, let's see...” Marcia hesitated for a second as she eyed the crown of his head. “I think we have some of that stiff filling for a brim—if not, we'd have to hustle on down to Syracuse. But, the bakery is closed for a little bit for renovations so I have time just in case. We both have time, actually.”

“Do a little fitting of sorts?” Sonia suggested with a nod back towards the other side of the shop, and I wondered if Frankie could join in on the fun with us.

“Four men and two ladies—gonna be quite the load for us, Sonia,” Marcia concluded.

“Hey, we once clothed more than that when we first opened the shop,” Sonia pointed out. Marcia then picked up some yellow measuring tape and extended one end of it with her free hand. It looked as though she was about to strangle both me and Geddy with it.

“Shall we?” she said with the smirk back on her face.

Sonia escorted us to a back room, which had a small wooden table and one of those wooden mannequins about the same height as Frankie. Meanwhile, Geddy, Joey, and I were shorter than him so I wondered how this whole thing would play out for us.

Geddy got down on his knees so Marcia could measure the crown of his head for the hat. She then wrote it down on a small notepad there on the table, before she moved onto his arms and legs, and then she wrote those down, too. Within time, she moved onto me and my hairy arms and stout legs. She locked eyes with me at one point; I wanted to tell her that I was married, but then I remembered Pearl wasn't even within my frame of mind. I wanted to tell her that I had my eye on Kristina, but she was nothing more than my childhood friend.

Sonia soon came to me for my waist measurement. It was so strange feeling my waist be so slim again, and yet Sonia hung before me with her thumbs close to my belly button like she was feeling up there. Her eyes met with mine and she showed me a small warm smile. I returned the favor even with my thick eyebrows and whole mess of body hair. A hairy Jew boy face to face with an enigmatic little seamstress was something I did not expect out of this little time excursion, but I could relish in it regardless of anything.

“Quite the hairy fellow, aren't ya?” she teased me as she glanced down at my forearms.

“Just a little bit,” I answered with a shrug of my shoulders. She gestured for me to come in closer.

“Can you keep a secret?” she whispered right into my face; her breath smelled like peppermint. I kept Kristina a secret from Pearl for twenty years; I knew that whatever Sonia wanted to tell me, I could keep my lips sealed for her. I nodded my head because Geddy, Joey, and Frankie, as well as Marcia stood right there right behind her. Hannah and Nancy, even though they were in the next room, they were within earshot of us. But I nodded my head regardless of anything.

“Joey is, too,” she whispered. I frowned at that.

“Well, I—kinda knew that,” I confessed as I struggled to keep my composure. I wanted to chuckle at that. I gazed past her to look at Joey's thick head of jet black curls.

“Not like that,” she continued; she kept her voice down low to an airy whisper. I paused for a second, and then I thought back to that conspicuous twinkle in her eye. I raised my eyebrows at her.

“Oh?”

“Yeah.” The smile returned to her face again. “But don't tell Hannah, though. I mean, it was before they got together, but—” She shrugged her shoulders and nodded her head side to side. “i—yeah. Pretty recently, I had kind of a little thing of sorts with Joey.”

I nibbled on my bottom lip because he was literally right there and Hannah was within earshot of us, but then again, I might have been worrying over things for no reason. At least, that was my hope.

“And I'm not gonna lie—I envy Hannah a little bit,” she continued.

“Don't blame ya,” I blurted out, to which she gasped at me. She gave me a playful slap on the shoulder before she stepped away to measure Geddy and Joey's waists and hips, although I knew she had a vague idea with the latter after hearing that. Marcia sauntered over to me with the pad of paper in hand and her eyebrows raised at me.

“What did she tell you?” she demanded.

“Stuff,” was all I could think of.

“Stuff, like—measurements?”

“Maybe.”

She paused for a second, and then she scoffed and rolled her eyes at that.

“Alright, wise guy, what's your measurements?”

A lie is a lie, but if I could keep Kristina under the graveyard for as long as I did, then surely I could keep Joey and Sonia under wraps, too.


	10. buttons, pins, and (needles)

_Hannah's point of view_

I had taken my seat next to Nancy in the back part of the shop, where Marcia and Sonia had set up a loom about fifteen feet long. I wondered what sorts of things they could make on there.

“Wouldn't it be something if we could craft something up on this?” Nancy suggested to me, as she ran her hand over the dials at the front.

“I could fix some of my jeans, and some of Joey's jeans...” My voice trailed off as I eyed the cords on the loom.

“So how'd you and him meet?” she asked me.

“Who, me and the dynamic Joseph? We've been best friends since elementary school. I moved to Rochester in the seventh grade, and that was where I met Francine, but I had to be away from Joey a long time, though. I missed him going into semi-pro hockey and becoming Mr. Lead Singer for a bunch of bands all around upstate, but then we crossed paths again when he joined them and then we were separated again for a little bit.”

“Why's that?”

“Touring for him and things were getting hectic on my end. But we've always been best friends, though. He told me the next time he'd call me was the day we could reunite.”

“And he obviously did.”

“My phone was going crazy that day so when I picked up when he called me, I said—and I quote, 'whaddya want?' and he goes, 'you.'”

“Aw, oh, god, that's so sweet,” she cooed.

“Totally a lucky guess with it, too,” I continued. “I wasn't expecting him at all so to hear his voice, it was like, 'oh... hello.'”

“It's funny because—he never mentioned you when I first him,” she pointed out.

“He probably wanted to protect me. From what he's told me, about all of that cybercrime and cybernetic type stuff, it's not one to be trifled with. Or he was just in survival mode then—that happened to me once or twice. I'd go into survival mode and just not think about him.”

I gazed on at her.

“Have you ever been in that situation before? Something so dire has happened and all you can do is take care of yourself?”

She nibbled on her bottom lip.

“It's okay if you haven't,” I assured her, “nothing to cry over.”

Geddy's voice floated in right then; we turned our heads to see him walking into the room with a makeshift long sleeved shirt made of that black and white checkerboard pattern fabric. I took a second look to find either Marcia or Sonia had stitched it together with several pins and some needles.

“Ooh, you look fabulous, babe!” Nancy declared.

“Also, Sonia's got one for you, too, darling,” Geddy told her with a twinkle in his eye. She stood to her feet and hurried into the next room, while Geddy adjusted the bobby pins close to this shoulders.

“Want some help?” I offered.

“Oh, no, but thank you, though,” he kindly said to me.

I thought back to that night Francine went missing. I was sitting the same way I was right there when she walked right out of the door. Geddy stood next to the doorway with his fingers upon his shoulders.

The hotel room was small and cozy, with a dark carpet that smelled of citrus, like it had just been cleaned for us right before we walked in there. Her golden blonde hair smelled fresh, too, given she had just walked right out of the shower before then. She had combed it nicely to where it had a little flip at the very tips. Her big bright blue eyes resembled to deep pools and her skin was smooth like porcelain. She dressed in her little pink pantsuit, but I told her to dress warm because it was raining in Canada.

“I'll only be gone a few minutes,” she assured me, “we just need a few other things besides the cheese.” She scooped up her purse and she left without her jacket. I took her word for it because I didn't know what was going to happen afterwards. The very thought of her being out in the Canadian wilderness without even so much as a jacket on left a prickly feeling at the base of my spine. I turned my head to the left to find Nancy striding into the room with a little tank on over her blouse.

“It's going to be quite some time before we have our own outfits, darling,” Geddy pointed out.

“And it's going to be quite some time before we can make our way up to Canada, too,” she added. “It'd be the best way to blend in if you ask me. No one has to know that we're looking for a good friend of ours.” Marcia called his name and he doubled back into the next room. Nancy then returned to me.

“Also, you never answered my question,” I pointed out to her. “You know. Survival mode.”

“As a matter of fact, I have,” she said in a low voice. “Right before I met Geddy and Neil and Alex. I left Seattle and I made my way into Canada by sheer circumstance. Even though they're our neighbors, it's the whole feeling about a girl being in a strange place.”

“Oh, I see.” I nodded my head. “You know, when Francine and I were up there, I had that same feeling, too. That feeling of looking at the city before us and wondering what was there...” My voice trailed off. She ambled over to me and set her hand on my shoulder. Francine was my best friend next to Joey: if he went missing, it would be worse for me, but it was that very feeling of being in a strange place. At least he had been up there a few times compared to us, but I still shuddered at the thought of him going missing, though.

Geddy returned to the room with the shambles of a hat on top of his head.

“Well, well, well, if it isn't Robin Hood,” Nancy proclaimed.

“I'm happy to give to the poor after all,” he said with a wink to her and a little smile to me.


	11. tea

__

_Scott's point of view_

If I was honest to myself, I wondered about Kristina and her life in Boston. I wondered about it so much that I could hardly concentrate on what was going on there in Sew Into You. I wanted to know more about her and I wanted to know about things there.

Joey said that I could use the arrowhead for my benefit and go to visit her whenever I wanted. So once Marcia told me that she would get to work right away on my checkerboard shirt, I took the arrowhead out of my pocket and doubled back to the shelves where Frankie had been standing before. I was alone standing there.

Just make a mark in mid air and a hole would open up.

I did just that and sure enough, a little dark hole emerged out of mid air. I had no idea as to how to make it any bigger so I ducked my head and climbed in.

I was surrounded by complete and total blackness. I didn't know if I could breathe there, and so I crawled along the darkness. It was like crawling on a slick veil, albeit one that was closing in on my body. I held my breath and kept going.

Nothing around me. Nothing but darkness. Nothing but sheer blackness. And something kept me steady.

I spotted a single white light up ahead of me. I kept crawling along on my elbows and my knees. I thought my chest was about to burst when I reached the end, and I somersaulted out of there and stumbled out on my back on a hard surface. Pain surged up my back to the base of my skull, to which I snapped my eyes shut.

I didn't move and I could hardly breathe from the pain in my back.

I opened my mouth and let out a long low whistle. I looked up above me at the sight of a sink basin to my left and a small bathroom window to my right.

The door above my head swung open and I caught the sound of a gasp behind me. I raised my gaze to the doorway where Kristina lingered above me, upside down no less.

“Scott! What—What are you—”

“I can explain,” I quipped to her; I pulsed my fingers and I could still feel the edges of the arrowhead against my skin.

“I'm sure you can. I heard a whistle in here and I thought I had left the window open.”

“Nah.” I winced at the pain in my back.

“Want some help?”

“Yes'm.” I raised my free hand towards her. She stood over me and held onto my hand to help me up. I set my other hand on the linoleum: I could feel the arrowhead underneath the palm. I gripped onto it as I stood to my feet and shoved it into my jeans pocket.

“Something smells good,” I remarked.

“I just put on a pot of tea,” she said. “Care for some?”

“Um—yeah, sure, why not?”

She giggled at me. I glanced about her bathroom and the warm creamy colored walls surrounding us. Nice warmth to take to me in after being surrounded by pitch darkness for a bit.

“It's snowing right now,” she told me.

“Remember when we were in school and we played 'Planet Caravan' to ourselves on our little guitars?” I recalled.

“How could I forget?” she said with a twinkle in her eye. She led me out of the bathroom to the rest of her warm lit apartment, just big enough for her. Up on the wall to the left was a shelf which upheld a bunch of little knick knacks and stuff.

A pair of little dolls looked to be made of ceramic rested on the end of the shelf. Their beady little eyes stared back at me.

I stopped before them to take a better look at them. The one on the right had a little black yarmulke atop its head and a little knit sweater about its body, while the one on the left wore a dark dress with a long skirt down to its ankles.

“Is this you and me?” I asked her.

“Huh?” She doubled back to me with her eyebrows raised.

“These two dolls here.”

“They started life as voodoo dolls, actually.”

I took the one with the yarmulke down first for a better look at it. It looked like a doll of me.

“Why would you have voodoo dolls that look like us, though?” I asked her.

“Just a coincidence,” she pointed out. “If it makes you feel more comfortable, I thought they looked like us, too.”

“What's this right here, though?” I fingered the deep rut on the side of the doll's lower leg. It didn't look like a mistake, though, like there was an imperfection in the ceramic.

“It's carved into their flesh,” she said, to which I threw it down onto the floor.

“Scott!” she exclaimed; she stooped down to pick up the doll from there.

“What?”

“Be careful with these! They're very delicate.”

She turned it over to make sure it was alright on the back. Meanwhile, I checked out the rest of the stuff on the shelf: a pair of heart shaped boxes, one of ceramic and the other of what I believed was cardboard. The ceramic one had been glazed and painted black and red, while the cardboard one had a floral pattern all over it. There was a small snowglobe with a silvery skull inside next to the ceramic heart shaped box. She had fetched a bunch of shells and bunched them up on a single spot of the shelf; right next to that was a small pile of guitar picks of all colors of the rainbow followed by another little black box, this one made of black velvet to which it resembled the box a ring came in. And then, at the far end of the shelf stood a white ceramic vase with a fake glass rose inside of it.

Kristina set the doll back on the shelf before us and that was when a timer went off with a soft little ding from the kitchen.

“Tea's ready!” she declared. “How do you like yours?”

“Uh, just a little bit of sugar,” I said to her.

“Is that all?”

“Yeah. I'm not really the biggest tea drinker. But I'm more than happy to have a cup, though.” I thought about Geddy and his love of wine, and I hoped he could get his hands on it soon enough.

“I have green, black, chai, and blueberry pomegranate,” she told me.

“Ooh, that last one sounds tasty!”

“I love that one,” she said with a glimmer in her eye. “It always puts me to sleep on the hard nights.”

She led me into her cute little kitchen with the rich blue paint job and the silver cookware dangling over the sink. She picked the bright blue teakettle off of the stove and poured the hot water into a pair of white bone china mugs. And then she reached over the stove for the box of blueberry pomegranate tea for a couple of bags.

In the meantime, I looked about the room.

“Nice little place you've got here,” I started.

“It's my home,” she explained as she set the bags of tea into the water and let them steep. “Nothing more and nothing less.” She handed me the cup on the right to me. Her luminous eyes stared back at me as she brought her cup up to her nose for a whiff of the blueberry tea.

“You and I should jam together again,” she told me in a low voice. “We can do it down by the dock and watch the birds.”

“Watch the birds?”

“The huge birds,” she elaborated, “endemic to Boston. Their wings are the size of city busses.”

“Wow,” I remarked with a raise of my eyebrows. “'Planet Caravan' set to birds flying.”

“Or 'Here Comes the Sun.'” She rounded me towards the doorway again. I followed her into the living room. She swayed a little bit with every step, and I wondered where she was going with all of this. She took a seat on the little blue love seat underneath the window. A little sliver of gray sunlight shone through the window behind her, down onto the crown of her head. Her blonde hair shone in the light like a little crown. There was something here, something I didn't know if she was ready to tell me as if then, especially when I glanced about the living room and didn't see any photographs of her family.

I thought back to my spoken word tour and I talked about her in Boston, by coincidence. No one really knew her, not even her own family. She was like a treasure locked away from the world, and the sun on her head made me wonder if there was something more she hadn't told me yet. But I was there in her apartment with tea in my hand.

I took a seat next to her on the loveseat. She showed me a warm smile, which was accentuated by the sunlight.

“I'm glad you were able to come here to visit,” she confessed to me, to which she raised her mug towards mine. I clinked the rim of mine against hers, and then we took sips of tea at the same time. The tea was warm and sweet and perfect, so much that I thought it was going to put me to sleep.

“Penny for your thoughts?” I started.

“I have only so many pennies.”

“Why is that?”

“I'm sure you know how hard it is to be a musician.”

“Absolutely.”

“We're both starting out and it's—it's admittedly daunting. It brings me joy, sure... but at the same time, it's like I'm looking at the great wide unknown that's the music industry.”

Joey immediately came into mind right then. I didn't want to think that, though.

“Have you done gigs, though?” I asked her.

“Oh, yeah. It's how I was able to get this place and all my things. But I still have a lot of fear, though.”

“Why's that?”

“There's a lot I have yet to reveal to myself.”

“To yourself?” I echoed her.

“Yeah. There's a lot I feel that—I'm not too sure to reveal yet.”

“Well... do you have an idea? Like, to get you moving?”

“Yeah, but—nothing that really sticks, though. I often feel like I can't write a good song.”

“What's your definition of a good song?”

She swallowed but never answered. Instead, she took a sip of tea. There was a lot on her mind and she had no way of getting it out of herself. And she wanted to record an album. I had time, but I also had my work cut out for myself. I wondered if I could make my way back to Rochester soon enough without a means of getting there besides arrowhead.


	12. barrettes

_Frank's point of view_

“This weather, I swear to God,” Geddy muttered in the seat next to me.

By the time we were preparing to leave Rochester, the lake effect snow began to emerge from the black waters along the highway. I had my hope that Francine was in a warm place given the lake effect spread its way up north into Canada. I snuggled down in the seat and shoved my hands into my coat pockets. I hoped we would get going soon, not just from the cold coming for us, but for us to find the first clues so we could begin the search for Francine. I ruminated on the accounts we already knew from Geddy and Hannah.

And I thought about them both once we all had piled back into the car and began our way down to Syracuse.

I looked out the window as the Rochester skyline passed by the window. Geddy and Nancy were both in the two seats next to me; I assumed that Scott had taken the next wormhole over to Boston to visit Kristina so Joey was up front with Hannah at the wheel. At one point, I glanced up there, and right as we passed a streetlight which flooded its golden light through the windshield. I caught the sight of Hannah's hand on Joey's thigh. Another passing light let me catch sight of Joey's hand on top of hers.

I thought back to the last time I actually saw Francine myself. At least, I thought it was the last time I saw her. It was right around the time Hannah and Joey had separated, and that was all I knew from my own experience with her.

We had just gotten home from the tour with Metallica, and it was after Cliff had been killed. I had called her and told her about the accident.

I still could recall the pain in her voice and how she wished for us all to come on home from Scandinavia.

“We're all coming home tomorrow,” I told her, given Jon told us that the tour was canceled until further notice. I still couldn't believe that Cliff was gone, and in fact, I could feel that wound coming back to me again. I stood there next to Cliff while he was about to board the Metallica bus. I looked at him right in the eye and told him I would see him the next day.

Even in the time of the pandemic, it would go through my mind every so often but right there it was even more potent. The very thought of it made me want to cry over him again.

I brought my knees up to closer to my chest even though I had plenty of room there in the back seat.

I recalled boarding the plane first and then Joey followed suit right behind me. In fact, if I recalled correctly, that was why Joey and Hannah rekindled things between the both of them later on. But then again, I had no idea because it was none of my business.

But the very second we landed in New York City, I almost ran off of the plane to the terminal. I reached the other end of the gate and I spotted Francine standing there with a cardboard sign reading “molto bello” in big black lettering. I ran to her and she ran to me. She threw her arms around me and pressed her lips onto mine. She tasted so sweet, like a fresh cup of latte, and she smelled so sweet, too. Her blonde hair shone like gold underneath the airport lights.

She drove me home to our apartment in the Bronx and once I unlocked the door, she yanked me into the front room and she lay me down on the couch. She made love to me once the door closed behind us. We spent the night together with a pizza for ourselves and a dozing off on the couch. I woke up with her arms around my waist and her knee up on my waist.

After that, my memory went fuzzy, except for that one moment before I went to the studio to begin recording the next record. I stepped out of the apartment with my bass slung over my shoulder and the rain began to fall on us.

“Frank?” she called after me. I turned around to see her walking towards me with her pantsuit readily buttoned up for another day's work for Hannah in her gallery.

“I hope everything is in a complete state of euphoria after losing Cliff,” she told me.

“We are,” I assured her; I thought of the record after the bus accident. We had risen to a level of something after that. We were ascending a mountain of sorts. She strode over to me for a kiss on my lips, one that was prolonged a little bit.

“And I hope we come into one of our own, too,” she said to me with a smile on her face.

And then my memory faded out again after that. Maybe it was because Scott and I returned to square one right after that.

I looked outside to the cold darkness. I was beginning to forget what she tasted like. I was beginning to forget her touch and that sweet smell of her hair. I didn't want to think that, and yet it was happening to me.

Every passing mile through the cold dark drenched forest, and every passing mile towards the blue neon making up the Syracuse skyline again, made me forget about her. Nancy yawned and leaned her head against Geddy's shoulder, or at least that was what I thought she was doing.

“Do we need anything?” I heard Hannah ask Joey at one point.

“I don't think so,” he confessed. “An' y'know if we ask each other that, one o' us'll vanish into the ether.”

“Joey!” she scoffed.

“What? I'm just tryin' ta lighten the mood a li'l bit. A need for sump'n leads to a vanishin' into thin air. I didn't say I wouldn't try ta look at things better.”

I watched his silhouette lean in towards the side of her head. I couldn't see what he was doing to her right then. He whispered something to her and I heard her sniffling.

“Okay?” he said to her in a low, gentle voice. “We'll find her. I promise.”

“Yeah, we'll find her, Hannah,” Nancy joined in.

“We'll find her...” My voice trailed off as I turned my attention back to the cold darkness outside. That was starting to feel like a hollow statement of sorts. The more one of us promised Hannah we would find her, the less I saw it as something legitimate. It was only until we began retracing things there outside of Syracuse when I could probably start to believe it again.

Hannah wound her way through the outskirts of Syracuse and soon enough, we reached their neighborhood and their apartment complex. I peered out the windshield to find two strange cars parked outside their front step.

“Who's this now?” she wondered aloud.

“Well, well, well, look who decided to show up,” Geddy declared.

“Alex and Neil are here!” Nancy added.

“What're they doin' here,” Joey muttered to himself.

Sure enough, they were both congregated outside their front door: both of them wrapped up in heavy dark windbreakers. Alex meanwhile carried a little black umbrella to protect the crown of his smooth golden blond hair. He snickered and shook his head at us as we approached them there on the front step.

“You got any room underneath that umbrella, Lerxst?” Geddy called out to him.

“Plenty for you, me, Pratt, and these pretty ladies, Dirk,” Alex retorted.

“Hello, police—there are these two strange handsome men outside my house,” Hannah joked as we came within earshot of them. “These two strange handsome men from across the border.” She opened her purse and searched for her key.

“Handsome!” It was such a trip to hear Neil's voice again.

“Yeah, I thought I was the handsome one,” Joey cracked with a hurt tone to his voice.

“She can think of other guys as handsome, too, y'know,” Nancy pointed out in a singsong tone.

“Buncha handsome fellas just in time for a hot slumber part—where are my keys.” Hannah shuffled through her purse for another minute before she lifted her head to Joey.

“You got your keys on you?”

Joey patted his chest and then ran his hands towards his jeans pockets. He took out a little key ring from his right pocket.

“Right here, baby doll,” he told her. “Remember, I've got the key.”

“The key to my heart,” she declared.

“The key to sump'n else, too.” He slipped the key into the lock behind Alex, turned it, and pushed the door open. Alex closed the umbrella and almost smacked me in the eye with it. We all filed into Joey and Hannah's ground floor apartment, which, once the former switched on the ceiling light and we could see what we were all doing, consisted of a cute little place with a warm lit kitchenette to the right and a cozy room to the left of us. Big enough for just the two of them, so I had no idea how the bunch of us would fit in here. I spotted a little heart shaped barrette on the table next to the lamp next to their comfy looking deep red sofa.

One thing I recalled from my last memory of Francine was she wore a little heart shaped barrette in her hair.

“Let's get some heat in here,” Joey suggested as he skirted past me and Nancy to the hallway.

“You guys want anything to eat?” Hannah offered Geddy, Alex, and Neil.

“Starving,” Neil told her. Meanwhile, I made my way over to the couch to examine that little barrette for myself. I took a seat there at the end of the couch and picked it up. It was in fact hers: I recognized the little glittery part underneath that little plastic red heart. I brought it up to my nose to try and recall her smell again.

Nothing. I sighed through my nose and Hannah returned to the living room to check on me.

“You want anything, Frankie—” She stopped when she saw my holding the barrette in my fingers. She stooped forward and gestured for me to come closer.

“You know she left that behind,” she said in a soft voice.

“Left this behind in the hotel room,” I muttered, to which she nodded.

“That's the only thing I have left behind with her.”

“Did she at least tell you what shop she was going to?” I asked her.

“No, she just said she was going out for a moment. You might have to ask Geddy about that because he was technically the last person to see her. According to him, he saw her watched her walk out of the market and that was it. I think that was his exact wording.”

“I'll have to ask him in the morning, I s'pose.” I forgot how kind Hannah was to me, and she was kinder towards me, and I knew for a fact that it was because Francine had gone missing. She gazed into my face with a soft look on her face and then she gasped. She whirled around to find Joey had lightly tapped her on the ass with his fingers.

“Hey, watch it, Mister!” she scoffed at him which made him giggle. She scurried into the kitchen after him, which in turn left me alone there with the barrette in hand. The only memento of Francine I had on hand right then.

I hoped she was alright out there


	13. words

__

_Hannah's point of view_

That barrette Frankie showed me got me thinking, and I wondered if there was any other way I could find my way back up to Canada without getting pulled over by the Mounties. Granted, I could definitely hitch a ride with Geddy and Nancy but who was to say I could return home? It was hell trying to get back home with Joey because he could cross the border but we still got caught up in the red tape. They were on the case, but I still yearned to cross the border with Geddy, Alex, and Neil again.

Once the four of them had their drinks there in the kitchen, I doubled back down the hallway to the bedroom, where Joey himself stood before my drawing desk. I moseyed up to him and raked my fingers through his black curls. He turned his head to see me, and he showed me that sweet little lopsided smile. I brought my hand down to his hip to feel him.

“What'cha doin'?” I asked him as I put my other arm around his waist.

“Just thinkin',” he replied, “Frankie showed me that li'l barrette Francine left behind.”

“Yeah, me, too,” I said. “Remember when you brought me home and we got pulled over by the Mounties?”

“Of course. And we were like 'we live here, you know. We're Americans—you can hear it in my voice, especially.'”

“They probably thought you were bringing home just some random Canadian girl,” I chuckled as I looked back on it. He turned his head to me; that crooked little smile never waivered from his handsome face.

“You do kinda look like you came right outta Nunavut or one of the provinces up there,” he remarked.

“A little indigenous boy bringing home another little indigenous girl.”

“Exactly!”

Geddy and Nancy burst out laughing in the next room.

“Holes on top of more holes!” Neil's big booming voice carried throughout the place. Joey then returned to me with a twinkle in his eye.

“Holes,” he repeated.

“Holes?” I slowly ran the palm of my hand over his slim waist.

“Wormholes.”

“What about wormholes?”

“We can use wormholes to get our asses up to Canada. Or back.”

“Well, how can we use a wormhole when Scott took the thing to make one?”

He paused with a nibbling on his bottom lip.

“We'll wait 'til he gets back,” he answered.

“What if he doesn't?”

“He will.”

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

He looked down at my hand on his waist; I caressed his stomach because he was so warm and soft to me.

“By the way, I'll give you like ten years to stop that,” he told me, “that feels so good.”

“So you think we can use a wormhole to head on back from Canada?”

“Maybe. We'd have to get in touch with Scott and Kristina, though, to open one up for us.”

“And how would we do that?” I followed along.

“Do you have Kristina's number?”

“No, I don't really know Kristina, if I'm honest.”

“What about Nancy?”

“Nah, she knows her as much as I do.”

“Nancy does know Dominique, though. She can get us up there.”

“Dominique is a reporter, right?”

“Nah, she's a journalism student. She does know her way around, though—she's lived around here long enough.”

I snapped my fingers at that.

“Hey, yeah! We could try to talk Dominique to sneaking us into Canada. She can tell them that she's from the press and that she's on assignment in Canada.” And then his face lit up.

“Geddy, Alex, and Neil can get Nancy and Frankie in, and maybe she can do it with us, too. The bitch of course is actually convincing her to do it.”

“Well, maybe she can help us. Geddy, Alex, and Neil were all willing to join us in this whole thing... surely Dominique will be kind enough to—you know—” I brought my hand up to his chest. “—give us a hand. She _is_ with the press, after all.”

“What about Scott and Kristina, though?” he asked me.

“What about Scott and Kristina?”

“What could they do?”

“Hang out in Boston for as long as they wish? I dunno.”

“Surely there has to be a way for them,” he pointed out.

“They'll find their way back to us,” I recalled. “At least, that's according to you.”

“Exactly!” he burst out laughing. Geddy's voice floated into the room and someone spat out something, which resulted in the five of them burst out in laughter again.

“Okay, fine, you got me there,” I said, exasperated. “I'm just kind of stressed out—you know.”

“Well, yeah. Like I said earlier, I do what I can for you. All my humor is meant to keep things light. 'Cause I wanna help my girl, y'know?”

I inched closer to him so my body was pressed snug against his. I was his girl and his best friend. I brought my hand back down to his flat stomach and his elegant waist.

“God, you're so soft.”

“Things like this gets me all kinds of tender,” he pointed out. He leaned his head towards mine so I could smell the soft cologne on his neck. “I gotta be the good boyfriend, you know?”

“The good boyfriend,” I echoed, “and the best friend and the—the muse—”

I turned my head to the desk before us.

“Ya want me to pose for ya?” he asked me and the smirk returned to his face.

“If you'd like,” I said. “I could have you lay out on the bed with your shirt off and I could do a little quick painting of you.”

“I dunno 'bout my shirt off,” he confessed.

“Why not? It's just us in here.”

“It's cold in here.”

“Oh, come on. I've drawn your nipples when they were erect like needles before.”

“If my nipples were like needles, you probably couldn't be able to touch me.”

“No, they were. They were like little cherry colored needles—all pointy and sharp—sharp enough to run them over a vinyl record.”

“You wanna run my nipples over a vinyl record?”

“What about running his nipples over a vinyl record?” Frankie's voice caught us both off guard, such that we both whirled around and burst out laughing with him. His face turned as red as a cherry tomato at that.

“One time I was laying in bed while it was cold in a room and my nipples got all pointy,” Joey told him, “and she made a joke that they were so pointy, I could've run them in the grooves of a record.”

Frankie slapped his knee and burst out laughing at that.

“Frank Bello, when do you laugh like that?” Geddy called from the next room.

“Don't tell him! Don't tell him!” I said in a hushed voice, but regardless, Frankie was laughing too hard to do anything more. With that, Joey returned to me.

“Let's close the door, shall we?” he offered.

“Of course, baby,” I said to him. “By the way, do you think we should tell Nancy and the boys about what we wanna do with Dominique?”

“Only makes sense,” he pointed out. “Transparency is needed in sump'n like this.”


	14. nightfall

_Nancy's point of view_

“They want us to do what?” Geddy asked me in a hushed voice. It was nearly midnight by the time the bunch of us turned in for the night; Neil and Alex offered the two of us to stay in a hotel with them, but we both assured them that we were okay with bunking on the floor of the living room. Frank was on the couch over our heads and so the two of us were left to lay on the carpet down below in a sleeping bag and a blanket. The sole light came from the waning green and blue neon outside, in through the edges of the window over Frank's slumbering body and the top of the couch.

The neon light was enough to light up the side of Geddy's face and that fine point of his nose, but it wasn't enough for me to look into his eyes.

“Smuggle them into Canada,” I told him with a straight face. The darkness hid the expression of his face, but I knew he was befuddled by the whole conundrum.

“Wh—How?” he sputtered.

“We'll slip them into the back of the car when we drive back up there tomorrow,” I whispered to him as I ran a hand through the fine stripe of hair on the side of his head. “They'll bring some blankets with them so they'll be out of sight from the Mounties.”

“They're not going to be very comfortable though. And you know how long it is back up that way, especially to Toronto.” He snuggled closer to me with his hand rested upon my hip.

“Hannah told me they'll be fine, though.”

“You sure? I've ridden back there for about ten minutes and I came out with my ass all sore—” He was cut off by the sound of Frank letting out a soft snore. All I could see was the faint outline of his face and his deep set eyes before me.

“I'm sure if they have something else up their sleeves, they'll whip it out so they can be all comfy and shit back there,” I assured him.

“All comfy and shit,” he echoed that with a little snicker. Even with the darkness over our heads and all around us, I could look into those deep eyes and feel at ease with him.

“Kiss me,” he whispered to me.

“Only if you kiss me,” I teased him, to which he chuckled at me. He pressed his lips to mine, but not without brushing the tip of his nose against my own. I thought of Joey's nose and I wondered if Hannah kissed him the same way I kissed Geddy. He held back to look at me right in the eyes. He still kept his hand on my hip.

I nibbled on my lip and then I moved back into his face. I wanted to keep on tasting him and I wanted to experience him. I wanted to forget everything that had happened to me when I landed in Winnipeg. He was so kind to me. He was everything to me.

His hand slid down the front of my hip and towards the center of my thighs. His fingers slithered in between my thighs as I kept my lips locked onto his. He breathed a little bit heavier with each and every kiss from me; I could feel his fingers making their way towards my panties, towards my crotch.

I closed my eyes as he let the tips of his fingers slip inside the fabric. He fondled me and prodded a little bit.

I set my hands on either side of his face. I slithered my tongue into his mouth. He gasped through his nose and yanked his head back. I wanted more of a taste.

“Nancy—Nancy—Frankie's right there,” he said to me in a hushed voice.

“So?” I asked him.

“So? What if he wakes up?”

“What if he wakes up?” I retorted. “Let him look.”

“Oh—Oh, okay, then,” he said in a light airy whisper.

I brought my mouth back to his and his fingers made their way in towards my lips. I ran my fingers through that head of fine hair atop his head, from the roots outward. He pressed his slim body closer to mine so my breasts cushioned his chest. All I could hear was the locking of his lips onto mine, his heavy breathing, and the pounding inside of his chest.

Something pulled down my panties. I knew it was going to be tricky for him given we were laying on our sides and inside of a sleeping bag. But I could feel his warm flesh against me.

I needed to help him.

I reached down underneath the covers and the actual sleeping bag to feel him. I gave him a little tug. He breathed harder and right into my ear at the feeling.

“Do it again,” he begged me. I gave him another tug.

“That's right—that's it—right there—” I put my lips back onto his to silence him and to keep him from waking Frank, or Joey and Hannah for that matter. “—right before we go to sleep, darling.”

I let my fingers relax across his skin. I could feel it tightening but not enough to go any further. If we weren't laying in a sleeping bag, I figured we could do something more with that.

“We should do this when we get our butts back into Canada, eh,” he teased me.

“Go a little bit further, too, y'know?” I retorted back to him.

“Oh, yeah, y'know, eh,” he laughed under his breath.

“I know I'll make you come sooner or later,” was all I could think of.

“Oh, yeah—wait, what?”

“I can feel you getting a little firm, Dirk,” I told him; the skin was taut but not enough. I had to work it a little more when we headed on back to Canada come the morning light.

“If I get any more firmer than this, I'll start going by Dirk in between the sheets.”

“Dirk between the sheets, or just Dirk?”

“Between the sheets of course. It'll be my stripper name! It's hell of a last name—beats the hell out of Weinrib, that's for sure.”

I giggled and rested the crown of my head against his shoulder. I never moved my hand from in between his legs, but he was kind enough to tug my panties back up my hip enough. I fell asleep with my head against his shoulder before he did anything else, and I awoke the next morning to the sound of his steady heavy breathing right in my ear.


	15. seatbelts

_Frank's point of view_

I was laying underneath a heavy blanket in the way back of the car right next to Joey and Hannah: she lay on top of his chest and snuggled her head under his chin. He rested his hand on her back to keep her in place as we wound our way from upstate New York to the Canadian border; he stroked her back every so often. I lay side by side with Joey to where his face was right next to mine. They lay closest to the back hatch while I was right next to the base of the back seat.

“You smell so good,” she told him in a low enough voice for me to hear her.

“So do you,” he said.

“You do, too, Frankie,” she added.

“I try my best,” I said in a hushed voice.

“When we get to the border, we'll switch places,” Joey told us, “Hannah and I'll swap with you, Frankie, and then I'll lay on top of you, honey pie.” She nestled down on his body some more. I could hardly hear Geddy and Nancy talking to each other in the front seat, but all I could think about was Francine. I closed my eyes at one point given I had no idea where we even were: all I could envision was her laying on top of me as well.

It was such a weird feeling to have a memory of her but also to not have a memory of her. I knew there was a way in which we found her up in Canada, but I couldn't exactly remember it, though. We found her, but it was all blurry. All the clues were to be lain out before us, but how it all played out.

I wanted to find it. I wanted to feel her again. I couldn't remember if it to us firsthand or if the Mounties told us about it.

I wanted Scott to be there with us. In fact, if my memory rang true, Scott wasn't there with us for most of it. If my memory rang true, anyway. He may have been there with us, for all I knew.

I thought about the whole thing about time travel and the butterfly effect: one thing changed in the past played out for a completely different future. Maybe the Mounties did find her but our seeking her out for ourselves could result in something totally different for the bunch of us.

Maybe they didn't. It was all a thick fog that was hard for me to figure out the more I gave it some thought. All the pieces were before me and I had no idea as to how they fit each other. I blacked out when Francine initially went missing, much like how I blacked out after Anthony was killed and also when Cliff was killed. It was all too much for me to think about at first. It all ended in such a vague manner that I couldn't really fixate on it too much.

In fact, I could perhaps keep Anthony from getting killed. If I could find Francine, I could keep that from happening, too. Undo the damage done to my mind.

I opened my eyes to look at the weave of the heavy horse blanket over us. I rolled my head over to see Joey and Hannah; I had no idea if they both dozed off but she had all but buried her face in his chest and kept one hand on his collar bone; she slide that hand down to his stomach. He stroked her back again with his fingers and she let out a soft groan from inside her throat.

Two warm bodies next to each other, especially when Hannah muttered something about him feeling soft.

My fingers tingled at the thought of Francine in my arms once again.

Did we find her? Or did she vanish off the face of the earth? I wanted to know. I wanted to uncover my own footsteps, but it was all beginning to fade away with the sands of time.

I set my hand on my coat pocket. I had taken the heart barette with me and I took it without anyone looking. I made a promise and I was willing to abide by it to the very end.

“Hey, you three, we're coming up to the border,” Geddy called back to us. I poked my head out from underneath the blanket.

“Okay!” I shouted.

“Okay, let's switch—” said Joey.

“I hope we can?” I said; there wasn't much space for us back there to begin with, but the first thing we had to do was peel off the blanket. I poked my head out of the back window to see the forest beginning to wane away into snowy hills. There was a soft mist floating around the sky; I didn't recognize where we were, but all I knew was we neared the border.

I climbed over Hannah and Joey, to which Joey rolled Hannah over onto her back at the same time.

“Oh, yeah, Joey,” I remarked as I lay back down in that corner between the floor and the inside of the hatch. He hung over Hannah with his black curls dangling down over her chest.

“Not really the best place to do it, though,” he pointed out. I caught Nancy talking about Niagara Falls at the front of the car.

“We're coming up to Niagara Falls?” I echoed, to which Joey raised his head. He peered out the back window and his face lit up at what was around us.

“We sure are,” he told me with a raise of his eyebrows. “Comin' up to the gorgeous and irreplaceable Niagara Falls, you two.” He lay down on top of Hannah's body and I reached down for the blanket again, and I pulled it over us.

“Oh, God, yes,” Joey said in a gentle voice, to which Hannah put both arms around him to hold him steady on top of her heavy body.

“Stay put, baby,” she told him.

“You guys mind if I lay closer to you?” I asked them.

“Yeah, Frankie, cuddle with us,” Joey told me.

“You just look cold,” Hannah followed up, “and we have to be each other's seat belts, too.” To which I inched closer to them; indeed, because they had been laying on top of each other for about an hour, they were toasty warm. He turned his head to the space underneath the seat, and it took me a minute to realize he was laying his head on top of her chest.

We slowed to a stop and I could hear Geddy and Nancy talking to each other about something.

“So we're gonna have to be quiet from here on out now,” Hannah whispered.

“Good idea,” Joey whispered back to her. We inched along the road a little more; at one point, I heard the window roll down. Geddy said something.

And then Joey gasped.

“Holy shit,” he whispered.

“What?” Hannah asked him.

“What is it?” I followed suit, and he gestured under the seat. I could make out the shape of a shotgun barrel: it was huge, about the length of Joey's torso. Just laying there under the seat within a few inches of us. I didn't even see it when I was laying there.

“Hope that thing's not loaded,” I whispered. “Jesus Christ.”

“Yes, I'm just returning home and she'll show off her passport at the next checkpoint,” Geddy told the person at the border gate. A little more talking amongst themselves, and then we rolled forward. We were going into Canada. We were officially on Canadian soil.

“Oh my God, look at the neon,” Nancy remarked.

“Neon before the second checkpoint,” Geddy followed up.

“Neon,” Joey echoed it as he rested the right side of his head on Hannah's chest, and so he could look at me. I could make out the fear in his eyes even in the dim light around us. Indeed, I noticed a bright green glow bled through the weaves of the blanket over our heads.

“Neon,” Joey repeated. “Oh my god. Oh, dear god, no. Oh, god, fucking help me.”

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Hannah assured him as she rested her hand on the back of his head.

I wished I hadn't blacked out because I could help him, too.

**Author's Note:**

> **song list!**
> 
> dreams // fleetwood mac  
> i appear missing // queens of the stone age  
> imitation of life // anthrax  
> beautiful girls // van halen  
> baggy trousers // madness  
> empty spaces/young lust // pink floyd  
> the moon and the melodies // cocteau twins  
> a forest // the cure  
> i’m afraid of americans // david bowie + nine inch nails  
> dark entries // bauhaus  
> ghost rider // rush  
> slither // opeth  
> blood // in this moment  
> aqueous transmission // incubus  
> never safe // joey belladonna  
> we’ve got a situation here // the damned things  
> the ghost in you // the psychedelic furs  
> your own best friend // green river  
> flying high again // ozzy osbourne  
> flower // soundgarden  
> armed and dangerous // anthrax  
> fly by night // rush  
> persephone // cocteau twins  
> de-luxe // lush  
> night train // guns n’ roses  
> overkill // motorhead


End file.
